Visualizzazione post con etichetta UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN. Mostra tutti i post
Unaccompanied child migrants face dangerous journeys during transit, including abuse and detention, rights organisations have warned, highlighting significant failings in safeguarding unaccompanied minors.

A recent report by UNHCR revealed that nearly 140,000 people arrived in Greece, Italy and Spain in search of safety in 2018. Almost 11,000 of the new arrivals were unaccompanied children.

Additionally, according to the Red Cross, more than 300,000 unaccompanied child migrants are currently at high risk of sexual and gender-based violence during transit.

The perilous journey undertaken by these young migrants without an accompanying adult makes them vulnerable to being assaulted, sexually abused, raped, trafficked into sexual exploitation or forced into "survival sex", according to an International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) report Alone and Unsafe, which shows that the number of unaccompanied child migrants has grown five-fold in five years.

Europe accounted for more than half of unaccompanied minor arrivals in 2017, with more than 158,000 reaching the continent in the first three quarters of the year.

Currently, almost 30 percent of all asylum seekers across that continent are children, half of whom are from just three countries: Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The stark reality is that it is now standard practice that children moving through the Mediterranean are abused, trafficked, beaten and discriminated against," said Afshan Khan, UNICEF Regional Director and Special Coordinator for the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in Europe.

A joint UNICEF-IOM report also revealed that children from sub-Saharan Africa are targeted more than any other group, highlighting discrimination and racism along transit routes.

The reason for their departure ranges from abuse at home and peer pressure to violence, says IFRC President Francesco Rocca, who called on UN member countries to address the root causes.

"In Cox's Bazar, for example, we saw many children with their neighbours because their parents were killed," Rocca told Al Jazeera.

"In Niger, we see young girls from Nigeria who sold themselves for sex for as low as $3. In Central America, there's violence that drives them out. It creates a very, very difficult environment for them to live in."
More support needed

More than 40 percent of all child asylum seekers are girls. A poll by UNICEF late last year revealed that almost half of nearly 4,000 refugees and migrants aged 14 to 24 were forced to leave their countries, 44 percent of them left alone.

Some 38 percent said they did not receive any help from anyone, including family, friends or relatives, while almost half the respondents reported that they had been unable to see a doctor when needed.

"While politicians are squabbling over migration, 4,000 uprooted children and young people are telling us they need more support," said Laurence Chandy, Director of Data, Research and Policy for UNICEF.

"Uprooted children can teach us a great deal about their needs and vulnerabilities if we are willing to hear them. Migration is inevitable, but the danger and discrimination experienced by refugee and migrant children doesn't have to be."

The risks, including sexual and gender-based violence, do not abate once these child migrants arrive in a country of destination, according to the IFRC.

A study, based on interviews with unaccompanied children from Horn of Africa countries who migrated to the United Kingdom, revealed that 72 percent of the respondents experienced more than one incident of sexual violence upon arrival - most of these incidents happened in the first 12 months after their arrival in the UK.

This shows that their safety is not guaranteed, even after reaching the desired destination country, added Rocca.

"If there isn't enough protection in the country of destination, there is a very high risk of being exploited and exposed to the violence. These vulnerable people can also be forced to the labour market."

Autore: Faras Ghani
Fonte:AL JAZEERA NEWS






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Abuse, 'survival sex' a stark reality for child migrants: Report

Unaccompanied child migrants face dangerous journeys during transit, including abuse and detention, rights organisations have warned, high...
Public opinion remains deeply divided over whether the U.S. government has a moral obligation to offer asylum to Central Americans children escaping political persecution or violence in their home countries. According to a survey published last month by theAssociated Press, 53 percent of the U.S. public think their country has no obligation to take in the latest wave of “tired and huddled masses” fleeing troubles in their home countries.

We talked to 11 scholars and activists who think the United States, a self-professed nation of immigrants, does have a moral obligation to provide asylum to Central American minors, many of whom — experts argue — are fleeing violence that resulted from U.S. foreign policy.

Fusion presents the untold history behind the unaccompanied minors, a collection of 60-second videos.


ROBERT REICH

Former Labor Secretary

“We are directly responsible for what’s going on”



Illegal narcotics have been smuggled through Central America for decades, but the violence of the drug war has metastasized aggressively throughout the region in recent years. According to the United Nations, the United States and Mexico’s war on the cartels has “pushed the front lines of drug trafficking towards the south” and turned Central American countries such as Guatemala into a “bottleneck” for 90 percent of the cocaine smuggled north.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand this stuff; as you push more and more of the violence into Central America … a lot of the kids and the teenagers face this diabolical choice: join the gangs, get killed, or flee. Many of them choose to flee to the United States,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich told Fusion.

In 2009, only 3,304 “unaccompanied alien children” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were “encountered” at the U.S. border, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. By June of this year, that number had jumped to 43,933, according to government data. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson predicts as many as 90,000 unaccompanied minors could be apprehended before the end of fiscal year, on September 30.

Reich says that by pinching the drug cartels out of Mexico and Colombia and into northern Central America, the United States may be implicated in the rise of unaccompanied minors fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
“Just connect the dots,” Reich said. “We are directly responsible for what’s going on.”


BILL HING

Immigration Law Professor, University of San Francisco


“The vast majority of these children would not qualify to apply [for legal status] under any existing immigration visa category.

Protesters at anti-immigration demonstrations around the country insist they’re not racist and that they just want the unaccompanied minors to enter to the U.S. legally. But most kids don’t qualify to apply for visas under any existing U.S. immigration category says Bill Ong Hing, who teaches immigration law at the University of San Francisco.

Hing says he’s concerned about legislation that would allow an expedited deportation of unaccompanied children without a proper immigration hearing. Nearly 50 percent of children with legal representation are granted legal status in the United States, as opposed to one out of 10 without a lawyer, according to the Transnational Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
ALEX SANCHEZ

Former gang member and co-founder of Homies Unidos


“Gangs are not the only reason why children are fleeing”


A common narrative among many of the children fleeing the northern triangle of Central America involves gangs terrorizing people through extortion, forced recruitment and drug-turf wars. Absent from the conversation is analysis on how and why those gangs flourished in Central America in the first place, and the economic conditions that allowed them to thrive. “When I hear people blaming gangs for the reason why kids are fleeing Central America they miss the real reason why these children are leaving,” explains Alex Sanchez, a former Salvadoran gang member and a founding member of the Los Angeles-based gang-prevention group Homies Unidos.

“These countries have economic issues, poverty, corruption and El Salvador even has an ex-president that’s on the run right now,” Sanchez said, referring to former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores, who iswanted on embezzlement and corruption charges for allegedly embezzling $5.3 million while he was president and mismanaging $10 million that was donated by Taiwan’s government during his presidency.

“All of this is a result of a corrupt society and the children are the victims in this tragedy,” Sanchez said.

POLICARPO CHAJ

Executive director of the indigenous community group Maya Vision


“Maya children face three additional language barriers”



A sizable contingent of indigenous Maya children are among the tens of thousands of Guatemalan minors fleeing to the United States. Once they arrive, they face additional barriers because many Maya speak little or no Spanish.

Policarpo Chaj was born in the central highlands of Guatemala and today serves as the executive director of Maya Vision, an indigenous community group in Los Angeles. His organization helps federal agencies in the U.S. with translation services for some of the 22 Maya languages spoken in Guatemala. Chaj says in his decade working as a translator for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) he’s never seen so many young Mayas fleeing to the United States.

Multiple requests to ICE for more details and data on the number of Maya children detained here went unanswered.

K’iche’, a Maya language spoken by the K’iche’ people in Guatemala, became the 25th most used language in immigration courts last year.

MARQUEECE HARRIS-DAWSON

President, Community Coalition


“It feels like the country hasn’t moved since the early 1940s and 50s”


Marqueece Harris-Dawson leads a community organization in South Los Angeles. He says the recent protesters in Murrieta, Californiaagainst the arrival of unaccompanied children in the region reminded him “of another piece of my history as an African American.”


DANA FRANK

Honduras History Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz


“What’s missing [from the conversation] is the responsibility of the really dangerous Honduran government”


Most of the unaccompanied children arriving in the United States are coming from Honduras, which has the dubious distinction of being one of the most violent countries in the world.

In Honduras anyone can kill anybody with total impunity, says Dana Frank, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.


HECTOR FLORES

Artivist, Las Cafeteras


“In the time of the great divide, my people were left behind”



Héctor Flores is an activist and vocalist in the Los Angeles-based band “Las Cafeteras.” He expressed his thoughts on unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. in a lyrical spoken word piece.

MONICA NOVOA
Communications Strategist, Families for Freedom


“The way that Central Americans are painted in the media is very harmful”



Mónica Novoa’s family left El Salvador when she was just three years old in 1982. Her family was fleeing a military crackdown that targeted teachers and other intellectuals during the civil war.

She remembers the way people fleeing the Salvadoran civil war were portrayed in the media when she was growing up. Novoa, who is currently a communications strategist for Families for Freedom in New York, says the press should consider how children feel when watching news reports covering unaccompanied minors coming to the U.S.

FELIX KURY

Psychotherapist, Clínica Martín-Baró, UCSF/SFSU


“A crime against humanity”



Felix Kury is a psychotherapist who practices at Clínica Martín-Baró in San Francisco. He worries about the psychological effects of sending children back to the environments they fled.

LEISY ABREGO

Sociologist, University of California, Los Angeles


“The Central American Free Trade Agreement has been disastrous for the region”



Leisy J. Abrego is a sociologist working at the University of California, Los Angeles. She’s interviewed more than 100 Central American youths for her book “Sacrificing Families,” which explores the experiences of Salvadoran parents in the United States and their children back home.

Abrego maintains that U.S. foreign policy is to blame for the conditions that Central American kids are facing back home.

“The Central American Free Trade Agreement has been disastrous for the region. Instead of reducing inequality, they’ve exacerbated [it] and made it impossible for people to remain there and actually survive,” Abrego said.

“One of the results of that inequality is that people have to find way to survive,” she added; “and when they don’t find it there they have to leave.”


SARAHI & ANTHONY DORMES

Mother and son who fled Honduras in June, 2014


“They killed one of my neighbors … the killers had confused him for my brother”


Sarahi Dormes fled Honduras with her 7-year-old son last June. She says her brother was killed by gang members two years ago; the rest of her family fled when the gang returned to kill her second brother in retaliation for refusing to join them.

Though her family managed to escape the immediate threat of violence in her home country, her family has been separated in the United States. She says the future is unclear.

The untold history of unaccompanied minors

Public opinion remains deeply divided over whether the U.S. government has a moral obligation to offer asylum to Central Americans childre...
A centre for young refugees in Saint-Omer offers shelter and protection, as well as the chance to enjoy being children again.

On a cloudy day in the northern French town of Saint-Omer, Ibrahim, from Darfur in Sudan, is tending to a crop of vegetables with eight other young teenagers.

Ranging from 14 to 17 years in age, they are among the lucky few who have been given a place at Saint-Omer’s Maison du Jeune Réfugié (‘house for young refugees’), run by the NGO France Terre d’Asile.

Forty-five children live at the centre, one of the few places that provide accommodation and protection for unaccompanied children who had been living in the makeshift camp known as ‘the jungle’ near Calais, 45 kilometres away. Here, they find shelter and protection, and can enjoy being children again – unlike in the jungle, where children sleep outside in makeshift shelters and are at risk of violence and abuse. Many have already faced danger while transiting along insecure routes through several countries in Europe.

Gardening is one of the leisure activities organized by the centre and is popular with residents. The children plant, tend and harvest lettuces, courgettes, thyme, tomatoes, basil and rhubarb.

Germaine Tetou, a social worker in Saint-Omer, is teaching them the French names for the vegetables and gardening tools. They repeat them, joking and laughing at one another’s pronunciation.

Tetou, who herself came to France as a refugee from Benin, says the children learned quickly. “Every day I am grateful to have this job,” she says. “I understand what they have to go through.” Gardening reminds Ibrahim*, who is 14, of his grandmother’s farm in Darfur. “I like everything here in Saint-Omer, but especially gardening,” he says.

He has been in France for 42 days, including the 15 he spent in ‘the jungle’, where he slept in a makeshift shelter with other teenagers who had fled Darfur, like him, without their parents.

“France has an obligation to protect unaccompanied minors living in the so-called jungle in Calais,” says Ralf Gruenert, the representative in France for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

“And that means first and foremost to find appropriate housing solutions and provide them with legal, social and health care, but also to establish a workable and speedy system for family reunification for unaccompanied minors who have families in other European countries, including the United Kingdom, where such a move is in their best interests.”

Activities at the centre include French classes, maths, music, arts, sports, cinema and gardening. There is also a library.

Manal*, 16, from Sudan, looks at photos of castles in the south of France after lunch. “It’s beautiful, where is it?” he asks. He wants to find the location on a map to see if it is possible to visit them.

In the afternoon, some of the residents will head to the cinema, where ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Star Trek Beyond’ are their top choices. Afterwards they plan to play football in the park.

They feel safe at the centre, where they are able to dream as children do once more.

Jamal*, 17, from Ghazni in Afghanistan, also lives at the Saint-Omer centre. He arrived in Calais alone after he fled home.

He says he feels comfortable in Saint-Omer and dreams of becoming an electronic engineer. “There is no fighting here like in the jungle. I like everything here but my favourite activity is learning French.”

Accommodation centres and places for children are limited. Most of the unaccompanied children living in Calais do not have the same opportunities as Jamal and Ibrahim.

“Every day we receive requests to receive more children, but we are obliged to refuse as the centre is permanently full,” says the director, Jean-Francois Roger. “More places have to be created. Minors need to be in a safe environment.”

According to NGOs, about 850 unaccompanied children live in the Calais ‘jungle.’

As an emergency measure, 215 minors are accommodated in a temporary reception camp (Le Centre d’Accueil Provisoire, known by the French acronym CAP) and the Jules Ferry centre for women and children, which are run by the organization La Vie Active. Both are full and cannot accommodate more. The other children live in tents and makeshift shelters in the ‘jungle.’

So far this year, of the 300,000 refugees and migrants who have reached Europe, 28 per cent are children and many are travelling alone. In Italy, 15 per cent of the arrivals since the beginning of the year are unaccompanied children.

In 2015, children comprised more than half the global refugee population of 21.3 million, with the number of unaccompanied and separated children on the move also growing dramatically.

Nearly 100,000 asylum applications were made by unaccompanied and separated children in 78 countries in 2015 alone. This was the highest number on record since UNHCR started collecting such data in 2006.

Tensions in Calais have risen over the past few weeks, with French demonstrators blocking access to the Channel Tunnel and the Calais ferry to support calls for the closure of the ‘jungle.’

No matter what, as winter approaches, suitable accommodation for unaccompanied children like Jamal, Ibrahim and Manal is urgently needed.

*Names have been changed for protection 

Céline Schmitt 

Unaccompanied minors in Calais cultivate a world away from home

A centre for young refugees in Saint-Omer offers shelter and protection, as well as the chance to enjoy being children again. On a cloudy ...
Up to 1,000 unaccompanied minors will be left to fend for themselves when the so-called jungle camp for refugees in Calais is bulldozed next month. The French authorities have made no plans to rehouse the children, the Observer has learned, because it is hoping to force Britain to honour a promise to help child refugees.

The French interior ministry has informed charities and aid organisations that it intends to destroy the camp in less than four weeks.

Almost 400 unaccompanied youngsters in the camp, some of whom have relatives in the UK, have already been identified as having a legal right to come to Britain.

In May, David Cameron announced that Britain would accept as many as 3,000 unaccompanied minors. James Brokenshire, immigration minister at the time, said Britain had “a moral duty to help”.

However, Home Office figures reveal that by mid-September, only 30 children had arrived under the scheme. The Home Office did not respond to queries over whether it intended to help lone child refugees once the Calais camp was destroyed.

On Monday President François Hollande is expected to visit Calais and confirm that the refugee camp will be demolished. Details emerged last week when refugee organisations were told that alternative accommodation elsewhere in France would be supplied for 9,000 adults and families.

However, because of a supposed lack of emergency capacity for unaccompanied minors, at least 850 children will be made homeless.


Josie Naughton of the charity Help Refugees said: “We are particularly concerned for the safety of the unaccompanied children and ask the authorities to ensure they are protected and accounted for. We also urge the UK government to make good on its pledge, as there is little time to act.”

Jess Egan of the Refugee Youth Service, which runs a safe area in the camp for many unaccompanied minors, expressed outrage at the development. “It’s really worrying – horrendous – that nothing has been put in place to help these children,” she said.

Emily Carrigan, who has been working at the unofficial women and children’s centre in the camp for nine months, said: “We’ve been told that there is accommodation provided, but not for unaccompanied minors, because they [the French] hope the UK will help.


“Who knows what will happen to them? They will scatter everyone, and we won’t be able to track them. They’ll disappear.”


The dismantling of parts of the camp earlier this year caused so much panic among unaccompanied children that many of them disappeared. One charity,Care4Calais, said that after an area of the site was cleared, 129 unaccompanied minors had vanished.

Charlie Whitbread of Care4Calais said he was looking to set up a system to track down lone child refugees after the camp was demolished.


“The plan is to remain active and help the small camps that will spring up across northern France afterwards,” he said.

Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: “The plight of hundreds of children, a significant number of whom have a legal right to live in the UK, is being ignored. Some have died waiting for our government to act. This is disgraceful.” 

Fonte: The Guardian;

New fears for 1,000 lone children in Calais refugee camp

Up to 1,000 unaccompanied minors will be left to fend for themselves when the so-called jungle camp for refugees in Calais is bulldozed ...
In his State of the Union address this morning, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker asked the EU and Greece to take strong and immediate action to help unaccompanied children: “without protection of these children, Europe is betraying its historic values.” On September 10, the European Commission announced €115 million in new emergency funding to improve conditions for refugees in Greece, including forfacilities for unaccompanied children.


Two asylum-seeking children detained in a VIAL detention facility on Chios island, Greece.
© 2016 Human Rights Watch

On a visit to Athens on September 12, the EU’s commissioner for justice said the creation of 1,500 places for unaccompanied children was a “matter of urgency.”

Rightly so. These welcome steps came just days after Human Rights Watch released a report on the plight of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and other migrant childrendetained in terrible conditions in Greece. We interviewed a number of children, including 16-year-old Wasim, who fled Iraq after the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) invaded his hometown of Mosul and killed his father. Wasim ended up detained round-the-clock in a dirty police station cell in Greece.

Hundreds of children who are traveling alone have been locked up in so-called “protective custody” this year while they await a place in Greece’s overburdened shelter system. Children are routinely detained in small, cramped, and dirty cells, sometimes for weeks and months and sometimes with adults. They have little access to basic care and services.

The European Commission’s leadership on the issue is welcome, but for the children who are currently detained awaiting shelter, more must be done.

Greece should use emergency funding to provide suitable short-term alternatives to detention, increase the number of places in long-term shelters, and establish a foster family system.

But financial support to Greece should not be Europe’s only response. EU member states’ stubborn refusal to share responsibility makes the problem worse. Transfers of asylum seekers from Greece to EU countries under the EU emergency relocation plan are proceeding at a torpid rate. As of September 2, only 49 unaccompanied children had been relocated.

EU countries should make relocating unaccompanied children a priority, speed up family reunification, and endorse a proposal to broaden eligibility for the relocation plan.

Leaders in Greece and other EU countries should heed Juncker’s call, and act in concert to put an end to the unjustified detention of children and ensure these children get the care to which they are entitled. Fonte HRW.org


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Europe Pledges to Help Migrant Children in Greece. Funding Should End Unjustified Detention of Children in Deplorable Conditions

In his State of the Union address this morning, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker asked the EU and Greece to take strong an...
Bekim left Albania when he was a teenager. He was forced to flee after local mafia tried to shoot his father, he says. He made the long journey over land to Spain, and it was there Bekim – not his real name – met people-smugglers who wooed him with promises of a new life in the UK. But it would come at a cost.

“You have to pay them a lot of money, around £6,000,” Bekim said. “If you don’t have the money, you can pay them back by working for them once you’re in the UK.

“The traffickers told me I can have a better life in the UK. They told me I can work for them and help them to sell things. I believed them.”

When Bekim arrived in the UK he came to the attention of social services. Realising he could be at threat from those looking to exploit him, social workers took action and referred him to the anti-trafficking and support service of children’s charity Barnardo’s.

Bekim says it was only then he realised the danger he was in. But he was one of the lucky ones.


A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that scores of other vulnerable teenagers have disappeared after arriving in the UK from Albania.


Asylum-seeking children arriving alone are automatically put into care. But freedom of information requests to more than 130 local authorities across England and Wales show that the number of Albanian children going missing doubled between 2014 and 2015.

Ninety-three unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from Albania – which is not a member of the European Union – went missing from care last year, compared to 46 in 2014. Around a quarter of those who disappeared in 2015 remain missing, while the rest dropped off the radar temporarily before being found again.

These children arriving in the UK alone are increasingly at risk from people-traffickers, with children as young as 15 being exploited for labour on dangerous building sites, the investigation found.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, told Buzzfeed News she was concerned about the reports: “This is definitely something on our radar. We are hearing that Albanian children are particularly vulnerable around labour exploitation and our team is looking into the issue.”


“Traffickers will brainwash their victims, they will be promised a better life. The young people are told not to trust anyone in authority.”

In other cases older men have used vulnerable teenagers for sexual exploitation and criminal activity such as selling drugs.


The number of Albanian children in the UK feared to have been trafficked for labour and sexual exploitation has quadrupled in the last two years, according to figures from the National Crime Agency.

Our investigation comes as the government explores plans to send unaccompanied asylum-seeking children back before they turn 18.

Now experts are voicing concerns that not enough is being done to safeguard Albanian children from potential trafficking gangs looking to exploit them.

Chloe Setter, of the children’s rights charity ECPAT UK, said the rise in Albanian children being trafficked and exploited was “staggering”.

“We know that children and young people are being sold into sexual exploitation and forced into committing crime by Albanian organised crime gangs all across the UK,” she said.

“Many of the identified children disappear once they are found by authorities, and most are never found. Our experience shows that these crime gangs are particularly brutal and use any means necessary to control and abuse these young people.”


Klevis, an Albanian boy aged 13, in his home near the town of Shkodra. He was among several boys AFP met earlier this year who are living in fear of the country’s blood feud tradition. Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP / Getty Images

Last year more than 450 Albanian children arrived alone to the UK. The number of people arriving in the UK to claim asylum has rocketed since 2013, with people travelling overland or using cheap flights to cross Europe. More than a third of those have been unaccompanied children.


A common reason given for asylum claims is Albania’s well-documented tradition of “blood feuds”, though earlier this month the UK Home Office downplayed the likelihood of such claims in its most recent country guidance report.

Despite uncertainties over why children are arriving in such numbers, concerns are now being raised that they may be in more danger once they arrive.

Last year 209 Albanian children in the UK were referred to authorities as at risk from traffickers. That number had jumped up from 117 in 2014 and just 56 in 2013.

Now NGOs are increasingly concerned about what is happening to these children when they then disappear from care. Many of the experts BuzzFeed News spoke to voiced fear that children could be being exploited once in the UK, with criminal gangs taking advantage of their vulnerability to put children to work in dangerous and traumatic environments.

Javed Khan, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, said: “Trafficked children are some of the most vulnerable children in society and trafficked Albanian children are no different. They are exploited for other people’s gain and many experience unimaginable trauma.”

Many of the children have been exploited in Albania or on their journey to the UK.

“The plight of children needs moving right to the top of the agenda. We don’t want to be in the position where five, ten years down the line we’re looking back and wondering why we didn’t address it then.”

The youth group Shpresa did an audit of the 180 Albanian teenagers it works with. It revealed that 46% of the teenagers had been trafficked for labour or sexual exploitation, while 26% said they were fleeing blood feuds. The rest said they were fleeing persecution on either religious grounds or because of their sexuality, while five young people said they were fleeing forced marriages.


“Once the young people are re-trafficked or join with gangs, we are usually unable to contact them,” says Esme Madill, who works with the group. “The travesty is that in spite of the platitude that every child matters, these children really don’t matter [to the authorities] and they disappear without anyone making a fuss.”

Lynne Chitty from anti-trafficking group Love146 has seen the number of Albanian children in her care increase greatly.

She recalled one 16-year-old, whom we are calling Admir. After arriving alone Admir was housed with social workers, but he had to be moved from his home three times after strange men turned up looking for him.

“He didn’t understand the problem,” she told BuzzFeed News. “He kept saying ‘you’re mad, they’re OK, they just want to take me to London’. He didn’t realise these criminal gangs are just looking to exploit young people.

“Traffickers will brainwash their victims, they will be promised a better life. The young people are told not to trust anyone in authority. Victims of trafficking need to be safe and they need to feel safe. When young people feel safe it helps them to regain a sense of control in their lives and helps to reduce their risk of going missing and going back into the hands of their traffickers.”

Kevin Hyland, the UK’s anti-slavery commissioner, told BuzzFeed News Albania was a “priority country” for him.

“One major issue is what happens to children arriving alone – we’re really concerned about that,” he said.

“The plight of children needs moving right to the top of the agenda. We don’t want to be in the position where five, ten years down the line we’re looking back and wondering why we didn’t address it then.”


Albanian children seeking asylum in France, in 2013. Jeff Pachoud/AFP / Getty Images

The Home Office says it is aware of the business in trafficking vulnerable children in the UK.


As long ago as July 2014, Karen Bradley MP, then a junior minister in the Home Office,told MPs of “a terrible industry in Albania of falsifying histories of blood feuds. Organised crime gangs are involved in it, and I have enormous sympathy for the children who end up in that dreadful situation: trafficked by somebody who is falsifying their life records in order to use them for labour and other exploitation in the UK.”

Bradley went on to say: “It is an absolute travesty that people are able to use and abuse these most vulnerable young people in that way, and we have to work across borders to stamp it out.”

Despite growing concerns about child safety, the Home Office has undertaken a pilot project in Croydon to explore the possibility of removing Albanian children back to the country.

In an FOI response, Croydon council said staff had been out to Albania in 2014 to explore how removals could work. Bradley and other Home Office staff also visited the country in 2014, but no children have been returned as yet.

Klara Skrivankova of Anti-Slavery International said: “This investigation highlights the sad truth that in many cases the UK’s response to trafficking is failing children. The authorities should be looking how to protect them better rather than trying to come up with the best ways to deport them back to Albania, where they’re at risk of being re-trafficked.”

The Home Office said it would only seek to remove an unaccompanied child from the UK if it can demonstrate that there are safe, appropriate, and sustainable reception arrangements in place in the country to which they are returning to.

In a statement, it said: “Law enforcement agencies, councils and social services all have a statutory duty to safeguard children as part of their local responsibilities – regardless of nationality or immigration status. A child’s welfare is always the overriding consideration.”

Fonte: www.buzzfeed.com

Autore: MaeveMcClenaghan





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Albanian Children Seeking Asylum In The UK Are Disappearing In Record Numbers

Bekim left Albania when he was a teenager. He was forced to flee after local mafia tried to shoot his father, he says. He made the long jour...
Sixteen-year-old Hamza, an Afghan refugee, can't shake the memory of another teenager's bloody, dying body on the ground metres from his tent. The victim, also an Afghan refugee aged 16, suffered severe stab wounds and head injuries in a massive brawl.


Fights are a daily occurrence at Elliniko, a sprawling camp complex where 3,200 migrants and refugees, mostly Afghans, shelter in the Greek capital's crumbling former airport and moribund 2004 Olympic venues. It is an overcrowded, squalid space plagued by a lack of adequate food and medical services.


The teen, thought to be staying at Elliniko with relatives, died in a nearby hospital. According to Greek police, three Afghans who had been living in the camp are under investigation for his murder.


"In my country, I saw dead people in the streets," Hamza told IRIN. The young Afghan hadn’t thought that a new life in Europe would bring him more of the same.


In January, Hamza and his uncle had set out for Europe from Kunduz, the northern city briefly overtaken by Taliban insurgents in October.


The pair parted ways in Greece after they encountered a closed northern border. Hamza's uncle paid a smuggler to continue onward, but Hamza’s funds were running low and he had no choice but to stay put. He owns one set of clothes, sleeps on a tattered blanket, and usually eats just once daily.


Alone at Elliniko, Hamza is an "unaccompanied minor", the legal term for those under 18 who have crossed borders without their parents or caregivers. They tend to be males aged 14 to 17, often sent to Europe by their parents as beacons of hope for the family from conflict-torn nations like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Eritrea.
Detentions and beatings


Human rights groups and Greece's own health agency have declared conditions at many Greek refugee camps unfit for humans. They're especially improper for children and teens.


Their status as minors is supposed to entitle them to special international protections and rights. But in Greece, a safe haven is often nowhere to be found.


Months after braving dangerous voyages by land and sea to reach Europe, they still face threats more akin to warzones. A Human Rights Watch report last week showed that Greek authorities regularly detain unaccompanied, asylum-seeking children in police cells, often for weeks and months. Fifty-six were in police custody as of last weekend.


In Greece, keeping unaccompanied minors in police stations is meant as a temporary, protective measure until a bed can be found within the chronically overstretched shelter network. But the children in HRW's report described the conditions as "unsanitary, overcrowded cells, including dirty blankets and bugs, and lack of access to information or services such as counselling and legal aid." Some had been held longer than 45 days, the legal maximum.


On the Greek islands, hundreds are kept in large detention centres where they cannot come and go freely, and there are accounts of them being beaten by police. A group of Greek lawyers has filed a case with the European Court of Human rights on behalf of four Afghan unaccompanied minors, including one in police detention.
How big is the problem?


Almost 90,000 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum across the EU last year, according to Eurostat – part of the wave of some one million souls to reach the continent by sea.


Slightly more than half of unaccompanied minor applicants were Afghan. Sweden received the largest share with 40 percent, followed by Germany with 16 percent. Just 420 applied in Greece, traditionally a transit country to northern Europe.


But the near-total shutdown of the Western Balkans migration route changed everything. Four months on, Greece is just beginning to take stock of the unaccompanied minors among the 57,000 migrants and refugees stranded within its borders.


“Pre-registration", a joint programme by the Greek Asylum Service and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, went camp by camp this summer to get everyone in line for an asylum appointment. It uncovered at least 690 unaccompanied minors previously unknown to the government and living among the general refugee and migrant populations.


At present, Greece counts more than 2,000 and only has beds in permanent, long-term shelters for 407, according to the National Centre for Social Solidarity (EKKA), the government agency responsible. The wait is at least three months.


"This is the longest waiting list we've ever had, by far, and it's gone up by 30 percent because of the pre-registration procedure," Christos Hombas, who manages accommodation requests for EKKA, told IRIN. "We are expecting it to go up further."





Greece is scrambling to care for the hundreds of unaccompanied youths no longer able to continue their onward journeys so easily. The country's protracted financial crisis has crippled its ability to scale up.


International aid groups such as UNHCR and Save the Children, along with Greek NGOs Praksis, ARSIS, and Metadrasi, have stepped in to provide temporary "transit shelters" for some 270 minors until they can be placed in a more permanent setting. Another 360 spaces are in the pipeline, including Greece's first foster care programme, which has placed 12 children with families so far. Five open camps on the Greek mainland contain 'safe spaces' for minors. Elliniko, slated to be cleared, is not one of them.


The next phase will be planning for unaccompanied youths' long-term care, as legal options to leave the country are scarce. Only 29 unaccompanied minors have so far been relocated to other EU member states as part of the EU's official relocation mechanism. Afghans and Iraqis are excluded from the programme.
The repercussions


With support still lagging, and without enough access to specialised care in Greece's open camps or the streets, unaccompanied minors suffer greatly in the meantime.


Many experience symptoms of psychological trauma from graphic violence they witnessed back home or during their voyages to Europe. Their current living situations – often overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe – do not allow for them to start healing, let alone integrate into a country that could become their new home.


"There's this idea that you can come to Europe and seek refuge, that you can finally take a sigh (of relief)," Shala Gafary, an American lawyer of Afghan descent who came to Greece as a volunteer, told IRIN. "They have not sighed yet. So all of this trauma is not only there, it's bottling up and pressurising."


Their vulnerabilities as youths living alone open them up to threats to their personal safety. Some are being sucked into a seedy underworld of child prostitution, performing sex acts in Pedion tou Areos park in Athens for as little as five euros, according to one recent report.


Formal camps are not much safer. Social workers with the Greek office of Médecins du Monde, as well as ARSIS, told IRIN they had received several reports of physical or sexual abuse among young refugees in camps throughout Greece.


"They come to us and say they're afraid to go back to their camps because someone is abusing or harassing them," said Nancy Retinioti, who heads MDM's social work department in Athens.


Often, the victims are reluctant to share details due to a deep sense of shame. Some attacks are fuelled by alcohol or drug use, which doctors and social workers report is on the rise in both formal and informal refugee shelters. The most common drugs are marijuana or heroin, Retinioti said. Many picked up the habit since arriving in Greece.


"The thing is that in these camps there is no recreation and no operational structure," Retinioti told IRIN. "There are no rules. People come and go. No one knows what is prohibited or allowed."
Anywhere else will do


For many unaccompanied teens, help likely won't come fast enough. Many will turn 18 before the Greek state gets to them, meaning they'll lose their status as minors and any special rights that came with it. This includes the right to shelter in a safe, protective environment as well as a right to family reunion with any immediate family members residing in the EU, via the Dublin III Regulation.


This is the danger for Abbas Ali Nazaree, a 17-year-old living out of a tent in Elliniko's parking lot. He will turn 18 in five months. In Afghanistan, his older brother had worked as a cook for a US contractor on Kandahar airfield. Taliban fighters then threatened him due to his affiliation with the Americans. Eighteen months ago, Abbas said, his brother reached Austria. But Abbas, who set out seven months ago, after the Taliban threatened him too, saw his own trip cut short by the border closures.


"I lost my phone, so I lost my number," Abbas said. He is not sure how the Greek authorities will notify him once it's time for his asylum interview – or if a shelter bed becomes available.


EKKA's Hombas admitted that on his 1,400-strong accommodation waiting list were some 400 like Abbas: youths with whom, for whatever reason, the state has lost contact.


"A lot of them are totally homeless," Hombas said. "They could be in unofficial camps or living in basements. Maybe they have fled Greece."


Not every child has a phone, and those who do sometimes run out of money to buy new SIM cards, so often there is no way for EKKA to follow up on initial requests for shelter.


Many unaccompanied minors end up taking matters into their own hands. Greece's shelters see high rates of runaways. Some are turning to Balkan smugglers, a lucrative business in the wake of tighter European borders. Others are turning to old smuggling routes out of western Greek ports, where refugees and migrants hide under lorries bound for Italy by ferry (A second Human Rights Watch report last week showed that Italy is illegally returning migrant children to Greece). www.irinnews.org






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Young, alone, abused. Unaccompanied minors wish they’d never come to Greece

Sixteen-year-old Hamza, an Afghan refugee, can't shake the memory of another teenager's bloody, dying body on the ground metres fr...
Di seguito riportiamo  un interessantissimo articolo sulla situazione dei minori non accompagnati che provano ad attraversare la frontiera tra Messico e Stati Uniti d'America.Il reportage di seguito riportato è stato scritto dalla scrittrice Sonia Nazario, autrice del bellissimo libro Enrique's Journey: The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite With His Mother e pubblicato sul New York Times.

"Se un bambino sta fuggendo da un pericolo nel suo paese d'origine e bussa alla nostra porta, implorando aiuto, abbiamo il dovere di aprire la porta."

IN the past 15 months, at the request of President Obama, Mexico has carried out a ferocious crackdown on refugees fleeing violence in Central America. The United States has given Mexico tens of millions of dollars for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to stop these migrants from reaching the United States border to claim asylum.

Essentially the United States has outsourced a refugee problem to Mexico that is similar to the refugee crisis now roiling Europe.

“The U.S. government is sponsoring the hunting of migrants in Mexico to prevent them from reaching the U.S.,” says Christopher Galeano, who spent last summer researching what’s happening in Mexico for human rights groups there. “It is forcing them to go back to El Salvador,Honduras, to their deaths.”

I went to Mexico last month to see the effects of the crackdown against migrants, who are being hunted down on a scale never seen before and sent back to countries where gangs and drug traffickers have taken control of whole sections of territory. More than a decade ago, I rode on top of seven freight trains up the length of Mexico with child migrants to chronicle hellish experiences at the hands of gangs, bandits and corrupt cops who preyed on youngsters as they journeyed north. Compared with today, that trip was child’s play.

In a migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Mexico, I met July Elizabeth Pérez, 32, who was clutching her 3-year-old daughter, Kimberly Julieth Medina, tight in her arms, and keeping a careful eye on her two other children, 6-year-old-Luis Danny Pérez and 12-year-old Naamá Pérez. She arrived at this shelter after fleeing San Pedro Sula, a city where she grew up and worked as a waitress but that is now the deadliest town in Honduras, a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

She was aiming to reach the United States, where her mother and grandmother live legally in Florida — 3,000 miles away.

She got less than 300 miles inside Mexico’s southern border to the migrant shelter, and that took 20 terrifying days. Four times, Mexican state and federal police stopped buses she and her children were on. She cried. She bribed them. Other times, she and her three children got out of taxis or buses to walk around checkpoints.Photo

July Elizabeth Pérez with one of her daughters, 3-year old Kimberly Julieth Medina, and her only living son, 6-year-old Luis Danny Pérez, at the Hermanos en el Camino shelter in Ixtepec, Mexico. CreditKate Orlinsky for The New York Times

After walking 12 hours around a mountain, they waited, exhausted, for seven days until a freight train left. July hid in a cubbyhole at the end of a freight car with her children, but 15 minutes later some men stopped it and shot toward those aboard. “Sons of bitches, we are going to kill you!” they yelled at the migrants.

Some migrants on the train threw rocks at them; in the chaos, July and her children were able to escape. By the time they arrived at the shelter, she had spent $3,000 sent by her grandparents and mother in the United States on bribes and wildly inflated prices charged by buses and taxis to reach the shelter on July 23. Two days later, she applied for a humanitarian visa to get through Mexico to reach her mother in Miami. She has been waiting two months.


“I think Mexico is putting up as many obstacles as possible so you despair, give up, and leave,” she says.

The crackdown has changed the shelter, Hermanos en el Camino, like many church-run immigrant shelters in southern Mexico, from a place migrants stopped for a quick bite and respite to a refugee camp where migrants wait for months, desperately hoping to get a visa or asylum from Mexico that would allow them to stay or safely continue north.Photo

The shelter Hermanos en el Camino, which is used for sleeping at night and to escape the sun during the day, when people relax, play cards and hold church services on Sundays. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

By day, some 150 migrants erect buildings to expand the shelter, chop firewood, clean, take care of one another’s children. At night, the dozens who cannot cram into overcrowded dormitories throw thin mattresses under the canopy of the huanacaxtle tree, in the dirt, in hammocks slung between branches. There’s a cacophany of snoring in the courtyard. A woman kidnapped by bandits in Mexico and raped in front of her husband sobs.

For eight years, July’s family has been struggling with the gang and narco-cartel violence that has overtaken many areas of her country. On Oct. 29, 2007, her brother, Carlos Luis Pérez, a skinny 22-year-old, was kidnapped and then found dead two days later in a sewage ditch, his hands and feet cut off. He had been on his way to deliver the family’s $91 in rent money when he was robbed.

In 2010, July’s mother left legally for the United States with a visa that her mother had obtained for her. When July’s mother arrived in the United States, she quickly applied for a visa for July, vowing, despite long backlogs for such visas, to get July out soon, too. “Hurry!” July begged, “I don’t want anything to happen to my children.” Matters grew worse in her city; there were three mass murders in the two blocks near her house as neighbors and friends were killed by the 18th Street gangsters who ruled her area.

Not long after her oldest son, Anthony Yalibath Pacheco, turned 14, he told July that 18th Street gangsters ordered him to be their lookout. “No,” he told them, “my mom will be mad at me.” Terrified that her son was in danger, she tried in 2014 to get any kind of visa from the United States Embassy; both her October and November applications were denied. She was told to wait for her mother’s visa to be processed, something that can take years.

On Dec. 4, 2014, at 7 p.m., she sent the 14-year-old and his friend on an errand just steps from home. When he didn’t return immediately, July called, then texted. Her son did not respond.Photo

July Elizabeth Pérez holds a photo of her son Anthony Yalibath Pacheco, who was killed in Honduras by gangs last year when he was 14 years old. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Desperate, she went to the police station, pleading for help even though she knew they were in collusion with the gang. They found her son’s bike at a house that reeked of marijuana, although no trace of the gangsters — tipped off, July believes, by the police. They found the boys’ bodies nearby moments later. Her son had ligature welts on his wrists, his face was beaten, ribs kicked, and burn marks singed his lips. His body had been stuffed into a garbage bag. Another bag over his head had suffocated him. Her son loved to help others, study math, and take care of his younger siblings, she says, and he longed to be a lawyer. “Why didn’t they leave him alive? Why? Why?” She sobs, tears streaming down her cheeks.


July quickly buried her son in a spot on top of the grave of her brother who had died, abandoned her house, and went to live three hours away. Seven months later, a neighbor tipped her off that the gang had found her. She left in less than 24 hours, carrying little. Speed was crucial; many migrants have fled Honduras only to be traced and killed in Guatemala by the same gang there. In her haste to leave her home she left behind her passport and photos of herself.


She decided her only safe alternative was to go to the United States illegally, but she made it only a few miles inside Mexico before she and her children were caught and detained in the 21st-Century Migration Station, Mexico’s largest immigration detention facility, in Tapachula, Chiapas. Despite Mexican laws that require all detained migrants to be notified of their right to apply for asylum, no one informed her of her rights. She begged to be considered a refugee. “I cannot go back to my country!”

The detention center was packed. Her children slept on filthy mattresses. Her 6-year-old son’s arms were covered in a rash and bleeding. July’s asthma left her barely able to breathe. She begged for medicine. Twelve days after being caught, she was deported to San Pedro Sula, where both her son and brother had been murdered. She immediately headed north again, fearing that if she didn’t leave, the 18th Street gang would find her.Photo

Siblings Luis Danny Pérez, 12-year old Naamá Pérez and Kimberly Julieth Medina, play cards with another child fleeing violence, Anthony Douglas Ponce Barahona, 3, in the shelter's women's dormitory. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Beginning in July 2014, Mexico redirected 300 to 600 immigration agents to its southernmost states, and conducted over 20,000 raids in 2014 on the freight trains migrants ride on top of, and the bus stations, hotels and highways where migrants travel. In a sharp departure from the past few years, in the first seven months of fiscal 2015, Mexico apprehended more Central Americans — 92,889 — than the 70,448 apprehended by the United States. This year, Mexico is expected to apprehend 70 percent more Central Americans than in 2014, while United States apprehensions are projected to be cut by about half, according to a Migration Policy Institute study last month.

Of course, barriers will not ultimately stop children who are increasingly desperate and can find new ways around obstacles. In a worrisome development for the White House that another surge could be brewing, last month more than twice as many unaccompanied children were caught coming into the United States illegally and put in federal custody than a year ago.

Mexico has been particularly zealous in beating back children traveling alone. In the first seven months of this year, Mexico had already apprehended 18,310 minors, up nearly a third over the same period a year ago.

But unaccompanied minors feel they have no choice but to flee. At the Ixtepec shelter, Brian Enoc Pérez Molina, 16, says there is nothing left for him to go back to — the local narco cartel, which trafficks cocaine and marijuana, killed his brother and father. He tried to go home once, to an island off Bluefields, Nicaragua, and the narcos nearly bludgeoned him to death, too.



No one systematically tracks how many deportees end up dead when they are returned to their homes, but the social scientist Elizabeth G. Kennedy in a forthcoming report documents, from news reports, that at least 90 migrants deported by the United States and Mexico in the past 21 months were murdered. The true number, she notes, is most likely much higher.Photo

Willmer Villatoro, 16, and his brother Alexis Villatoro, 18, at the Hermanos en el Camino shelter. They fled gangs in El Salvador after Willmer was shot for not joining them.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York TimesPhoto

Willmer Villatoro's scar from a gunshot wound inflicted by gangs in El Salvador.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Although President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico said when he announced the so-called Southern Border Plan that it was to “protect the human rights of migrants as they pass through Mexico,” the opposite has happened. By the Mexican government’s own accounting, 72,000 migrants have been rescued from kidnappers in recent years. They are often tortured and held for ransom. The survivors tell of being enslaved working in marijuana fields or forced into prostitution. Many are killed — sometimes they have organs harvested — in what’s become an invisible, silent slaughter. The government push has been interpreted as open season on migrants who have become prey to an exploding number of criminals and the police who rob, rape, beat and kill them.

The crackdown has forced migrants to travel in ways that are harder, take longer, are more isolated and have fewer support mechanisms. New measures have made riding on top of freight trains north, a preferred method for anyone who cannot afford a $10,000 smuggler fee, incredibly difficult. In Tierra Blanca, Veracruz and elsewhere, tall concrete walls topped with concertina wire have been constructed to thwart migrants. In Apizaco, the Lechería train station outside Mexico City and elsewhere, chest-high concrete pillars, or rocks, have been installed on both sides of the tracks so migrants cannot run alongside moving trains and board them.

PhotoPeople head north in Chahuites, Mexico. It is one of the most dangerous areas along the southern migrant trail, where people are preyed on by criminals and fear officials monitoring the trains.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

In Veracruz, low-hanging structures have been built that the trains pass through, so unsuspecting migrants atop freight cars are swept off moving trains. Mexican immigration officials are using tasers to zap people off moving freight trains, says Alberto Donis, operating coordinator of the Hermanos en el Camino shelter in Ixtepec.

Four in five of the migrants I spoke to at the Ixtepec shelter have walked most of the way, often with babies or toddlers in their arms.

“There are children walking the length of Mexico,” often at night so as not to be seen, says David Muñoz Ambriz, the Latin America communications manager for World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian aid group.

Migrants are also taking more clandestine, dangerous routes to go undetected, far from the dozens of mostly Catholic-run shelters that have sprung up next to the tracks to aid them. The Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, the priest who runs the Ixtepec shelter, has worked arduously to reduce abuses. He has been jailed by the police, threatened by narco traffickers, and lives with multiple bodyguards in daily fear for his life for denouncing barbaric crimes against migrants and complicity by Mexican law enforcers.Photo

A morning scene at the immigrant shelter in Chahuites, one of the most dangerous areas on the southern trail. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

As Mexico has blocked refugees from moving forward, it places enormous obstacles in the way of being able to apply for asylum in Mexico. Those who are detained by migrant officials and are allowed to apply remain locked up during a process that can take months or a year, sometimes in jails where rats roam by day and worms infest the food migrants get. Of those who are able to hold out for a decision, only about 20 percent win — less than half of the roughly 50 percent asylum approval rate of the United States. Mexico granted asylum to 18 children last year.



“You can lock people inside a burning house, you can close the front door, but they will find a way out,” says Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “The U.S. doesn’t want to recognize this as a refugee situation. They want Mexico to be the buffer, to stop arrivals before they get to our border.”

OTHER surrounding Latin American countries outside the so-called three conflicted Northern Triangle countries — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — have seen an almost 1,200 percent spike in asylum claims between 2008 and 2014, according to a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees study.Photo

A guide for migrants in Ixtepec issued by the National Institute of Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración), a government organization that supervises immigrants. The pamphlet includes maps as well as safety and legal information.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

While a legitimate debate can continue about the pluses and minuses of economic migrants to the United States, the solution with these refugees from our neighbors to the south is clear. It seems ridiculous to have to say it: If a child is fleeing danger in his or her home country, and that child knocks on our door pleading for help, we should open the door. Instead of funding only the current policies toward migrants in Mexico, we should fund fair efforts by Mexico to evaluate which Central Americans are refugees.

While migrants’ claims are evaluated, we should help Mexico pay for places for migrants to be held that are humane.

The United States should develop a system for these refugees, much like Europe is now doing for Syrians, to equitably allocate people who are fleeing harm throughout this continent — including sending them to safer countries in Latin America, to Canada and to the United States. In the 1980s, many United States churches stepped up to help Central Americans fleeing civil war violence, and many would gladly sponsor a migrant today if encouraged by our government.

Will the United States step up and be a moral leader for these refugees?

Sonia Nazario is the author of “Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite With His Mother.”

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