EU report highlights overcrowding and hygiene issues in migration detention facility

The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has issued its Children in Migration report for the year 2019, highlighting the issues child migrants face in EU countries, and in Malta’s case, highlighted issues with the country’s facilities.

This report looks into challenges to the fundamental rights of children in migration throughout 2019. It pulls together the main issues identified in FRA’s Quarterly Bulletins on migration in selected EU Member States.

In 2019, the main challenges concerning the fundamental rights of children in migration included reaching and entering the EU. “Children risk death or injury when they try to enter the EU to seek international protection or a better life. The International Organization for Migration estimates that, in 2019, some 80 children died or went missing while crossing the sea to Europe. Moreover, since 2015, at least 34 children are known to have died while trying to cross land borders after their arrival in Europe.” In terms of overall statistics, according to International Organisation for Migration, some 1,885 people are estimated to have died or gone missing in 2019 while crossing the sea to reach Europe.

Another challenge related to arriving and staying in the EU, in which Malta was mentioned: “Reception capacity for all asylum applicants, particularly for unaccompanied children who have special protection needs, was insufficient in Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain,” the report read.

In the part of the report referring to Malta on this topic, it read that “where no new reception facilities have opened in the past years, increased arrivals led to overcrowding, riots and arbitrary detention. This constitutes a serious risk to the life, health and psychological wellbeing of children.”

Children also faced difficulties as a result of reception conditions in Cyprus, Croatia, France,

Hungary, Italy, Malta, and Spain, the report continued. “In Malta, authorities placed many new arrivals, including unaccompanied children, in the Safi barracks, the country’s main immigration detention facility. The facility was soon overcrowded and facing serious hygienic issues. In October, there was a riot in the largest open reception centre in Ħal Far, hosting 1,200 people. It led to the temporary suspension of food distribution and the arrest of 107 people, including unaccompanied children.”

The report also read that children often lacked child appropriate facilities and adequate facilities for play and leisure in some reception facilities in Malta.

Issues with the way Malta, as well as Germany, France and Spain conduct the age assessment of migrants also raised concern. “In Malta, age assessment is not multidisciplinary; and is conducted on every child (as opposed to when a child’s age is in doubt); and there is currently a large backlog.”

The report also highlighted that since 2015, the detention of children in migration, in particular to facilitate their return, has been on the rise. “According to available data, in 2015-2016, detention of unaccompanied children pending return was allowed in 19 EU Member States. In 2019, in some EU Member States, including France, Greece and Malta, the use and length of child detention was increasing.”