Unaccompanied foreign minors:Europe put to the test of rights

 

'I have my mother and three little brothers in Kabul who depend on this trip, failure was not an option.'Ahmad (not his real name) is 16 years old.It comes to Europe from Afghanistan and tries ten times to jump over the wall of the port of Patras in Greece.He is also bitten by the guards' dogs.But in the end he succeeds.And while he does it, he films himself with his cell phone.

Feet, black sneakers, faded pants of the same color, a blue thread passing over one foot.The legs are leaning on a metal bar, there is an intense noise, it could be that of a plane or a ship.The mobile phone picks up, but it's still not clear where we are, an iron skeleton and the air flowing, for a moment it seems like we're in flight.The phone is lowered and it is finally clear what is happening in this video:the asphalt flows fast and the wheel of a truck turns at the same speed.The cell phone returns to the bars under the truck and the camera turns towards the person holding it:the head bent in an unnatural position due to the limited space, a jaunty face, crew cut hair and a little believable moustache.Ahmad looks into the room and smiles for a second.He finally did it.

To tell his story in “Getting lost in Europe.Without family”, published by Altreconomia, is Fausta Omodeo, former university professor of biochemistry.Since she retired she has been a volunteer in Ark project, historical reality of Milan for the "vulnerable" people of the city.A world of people out there who, like Ahmad, escape services, transiting or invisible.

With "her friends", as she says, Fausta invented a street service with some emergency homes:in the evening at the Milan station there are always two or three of them, looking for people, mainly migrants, in difficulty.In 2020 they became an association, Reti Milano, which continues to serve on the streets, but which manages to dialogue with the Municipality and all the services that deal with migration and initial reception in the city.They maintain the Garibaldi spirit of the beginning and in the event of delicate cases, minors or families with children, rather than leaving them on the street, a chat is activated to find temporary shelter.

Today Ahmad is in Germany, he is following an integration path and his trip was a success, but this is not the case for many minors.The situation in Milan for unaccompanied foreign minors has been out of control for some time now.And not only there.

At least 18 thousand unaccompanied migrant minors disappeared in Europe between 2018 and 2020

Currently in Italy There are almost 22 thousand unaccompanied foreign minors (MSNA) and most of them, like Ahmad, are teenage boys.Since last summer it remains one of the highest numbers ever recorded since 2015.

At least 12 a day escape from the centers and disappear.Their lives are at the center of the group's work Lost in Europe – a pool of 28 reporters from 14 countries – who take care not to lose track of the stories of these boys and girls, even very young ones, who are too often invisible throughout Europe.With a collection of data collected in 30 European countries and analyzed by experts and data journalists, Lost in Europe found that at least 18 thousand unaccompanied migrant minors – 17 per day – disappeared after arriving in Europe between 2018 and 2020.

And there are at least 289, according to Unicef, the boys and girls who died or disappeared in 2023 alone while trying to follow one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world, that of the central Mediterranean:11 children die or go missing every week.Almost two every day.

A work of investigative and collaborative journalism, that of Lost in Europe, which tries to answer crucial questions:What are the routes that unaccompanied foreign minors use to reach Europe?What are the dangers they run?Is the European Union really capable of welcoming and protecting them?

From the central Mediterranean and the borders between Italy and France, from Bosnia to Greece, from Kosovo with its smuggling of minors, from the countries of Northern Europe and the reality of trafficked Vietnamese children, passing through the disputed Ukrainian orphans.And from the situation in the major Italian cities, where the reception system has been under pressure for some time.In Rome - civil society but also the police unions denounce it - days pass in police stations.Even with Covid, sleeping on a bench under the eyes of those who pass by for a passport or a complaint.

Government action

In the summer of 2023, the one in which in Lampedusa they registered in just one day up to 7 thousand people arriving from the sea, the municipalities, which are responsible for welcoming those under 18 years of age, have raised a clear alarm:“There are no more places.”Italy in fact fails in the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.The government has pointed the finger at law 47/2017, the so-called Zampa law, which provides for a strengthened (and therefore more expensive) reception and integration path for child migrants who cannot be rejected, repatriated or expelled.

Migrants, the Meloni government talks about invasion but this is a humanitarian crisis

And the debate focused on alleged 'false minors', i.e. those who, while adults, declare they are under 18 years old.A phenomenon whose data is, to say the least, difficult to collect.While the evils of the reception system, for adults and otherwise, come rather, according to ARCI for example, from the total - and reiterated by all recent governments - lack of planning even required by law.

“Legal Monsters”

Joof Ousaineu hadn't even turned 16 yet when he landed in Sicily.On board the small boat that crossed the central Mediterranean he was the smallest, or at least it seemed so to him.A nightmare journey for him, who says he suffered from seasickness the entire time and that, upon disembarkation, he even spent a night in hospital for dehydration.For eight years now he has been fighting to prove his innocence.Italian justice accuses him of having driven that boat, therefore of human trafficking.Not only:initially detained him and tried him as an adult.The wrist x-ray he underwent upon landing said so, on the other hand.“Emergency legislation on immigration produces legal monsters”, explains Ousaineu's lawyer, Cinzia Pecoraro.

According to the so-called 'Cutro 2' decree of last October 6, in times of emergency, with high numbers of arrivals of people, the procedures for verifying age may be accelerated.Yes to the more immediate use of methods such as wrist x-rays which led Joof, a minor, to an adult prison for almost a year.So yes to invasive methodologies, with margins of error of at least two years and which up to now have remained the same reads Zampa of 2017 had firmly excluded it as a single parameter, instead requesting multidisciplinary commissions and invasive examination only as a last step.Five - yes, five - are the days that the person who declares himself a minor will have to present any appeal.

It's still.Anyone under 18 but over 16 may be hosted in adult centers for up to a maximum of 3 months, always in contexts of "serious migration crisis".Rights cost money, and so we intervene on the costs for the reception of UASCs provided for by the Zampa law, with strengthened protections in the "superior interests of the minor".While Italy in recent months she has been convicted several times by the European Court of Human Rights precisely for how it welcomes the youngest children:for having detained a minor, victim of abuse, in an adult center, for example.Or for having welcomed with "inhuman and degrading treatment" and illegally detained, even for a long time, in the Taranto hotspot, some adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 arrived in Europe from Gambia, Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast and Bangladesh.

And then, as the bar of human rights gets lower and lower, there are rejections.“Unaccompanied foreign minors arriving in Italy they cannot be rejected, have the right to be correctly identified and placed in a first reception facility dedicated to them, as established by law 47/2017".The eighth report from the organizations of the Protecting Rights at Borders (PRAB) network “Rejected at the borders of Europe:a crisis continually ignored” published at the beginning of February documents the rejection of 3,180 people in the areas of Oulx and Ventimiglia.Among them 737 boys and girls, of which 519 were unaccompanied minors.“A disturbing aspect is the practice of rejecting minors who are wrongly registered as adults,” it is read. 

(Not) be 18 years old

There is, and is known to anyone who works in hospitality, another phenomenon - which however seems to worry the system and politics less:that of young, very young people (especially girls, who have always constituted a much smaller percentage of the total UASC - at this moment less than 12% of presences) who are minors but who declare themselves to be adults.They do it precisely to "escape" the protections of the law and the welcome reserved for those under 18 years of age.Because this is what they have to do, stranded as they are in the criminal networks of trafficking and sexual exploitation.

S.She was 14 and a half years old when she was recruited in Nigeria and sent to prostitute herself in Turin.Federica Gaspari, social psychologist of the Parsec cooperative, met her three years later, in 2019, at the “Casal Del Marmo” penal institute for minors in Rome.Borderline, angry, violent and one step away from schizophrenia.Arrested in Turin at the age of 16, she was deemed an adult and detained in the 'Lorusso e Cutugno' prison.“After a few months someone must have finally looked her in the face,” Gaspari comments.Seeing all his years, certainly less than 18.S.she is then transferred to juvenile detention, but the sentence, as a matter of fact, is very heavy:three and a half years, accused of being a recruiter of other girls.Nobody, not even the judge, listened to her, says Gaspari.Nobody asked her how she arrived in Italy.Nobody understands that she is trafficked first.Only after a long time was she sent to Casal del Marmo, by court decision, in the knowledge that there is an anti-trafficking service in Rome and with the explicit request, finally, to activate it.And there finally his whole story emerges, not just his young age.

Federica met her again, after many years, recently.“It has now been reported to me in the work reintegration project that I coordinate,” he says.After five years and after a judicial history that ended with being put to the test, today S.he has a little girl, a partner, a family project and a job that he wants to improve.The system crushed her, but she got back up.

Preview image:Save The Children video frame via YouTube