European Union Kids Abroad: ignore them, abuse them or protect them?

21 Nov 2008 |

“Children who leave home and migrate, either within their own country or to another country, are entitled to far better efforts to protect them from abuse and exploitation”, says the Terre des Hommes International Federation today.

In a new report, “Kids Abroad”, Terre des Hommes reviews a wide range of initiatives to support children who leave home without being accompanied by any other family member, discussing the situation in Western and South Eastern Europe and also in West Africa, Central America, South Asia and South East Asia. (…)

“There are too many missed opportunities to protect children, particularly foreign children”, says Raffaele K. Salinari, Chair of Terre des Hommes International Federation. “In particular, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have developed effective and imaginative ways of protecting children who are on the move. But governments, instead of helping, often impede efforts to protect such children – and in the worst cases are the ones responsible for abusing children’s rights.” (…)

The study criticises the way that children travelling alone are treated in some countries, but focuses primarily on what can be done within the limitations of the law to assist such children and enable them to exercise their human rights. It notes that in countries where immigration policy (and detaining irregular immigrants) is a government priority, it is difficult for Terre des Hommes or other organisations to give separated children the support that child rights organisations know to be appropriate (and to which the children are often entitled), for fear that they will be accused of infringing the law.

As a matter of public policy, most governments encourage children to attend school and to remain there, at least until they complete their primary education. However, millions do not do so and set out to ‘seek their fortune’ while still adolescents or even before reaching puberty. While public policy may not want to approve or encourage their actions, thousands of NGOs around the world are engaged in efforts to protect and assist such children, particularly when they are far from home and are vulnerable to abuse because they are cut off from the families or home communities who could help protect them.

The study found that in one country in South Eastern Europe NGOs have played an important role in developing the capacity of local social services to identify children who are at high risk of being taken out of school and made to earn money, sometimes even before reaching the age of ten. In South East Asia, international organisations have provided crucial support to an NGO that represents an immigrant community. This has strengthened the ability of immigrants to defend the own rights, denouncing cases in which adolescent and adult workers have been abused at work and making it safer for the children of migrant workers to attend local schools. In large countries where children migrate a thousand kilometres in search of a living, such as China and India, the study praises the role of projects which have linked up the communities in towns which are the destinations of child migrants and the villages from which they come. By linking the two ends of the migration chain and making migration ‘less unsafe’, such initiatives have brought significant benefits for children and deserve to be replicated in other regions.

Terre des Hommes’ study ends with a series of recommendations. The main one is that more effort should be made to “prevent migration being unsafe” for young people under 18. Other, more specific recommendations include:

1. More investment is required to develop techniques for protecting children who are actually in transit, moving from one place to another in search of a better future.
2. Better and more imaginative use could be made of communications and information technology to protect children on the move, notably by ensuring they can stay in contact with others while travelling and after reaching their destination.
3. Not enough attention has been given to understanding ‘indigenous’ practices which have the effect of protecting children from harm and which can be strengthened at relatively little cost.

Download the report here