Europe The rates of disappearance of foreign minors from institutions reach 50 percent

25 Jan 2010 |

Terre des hommes is launching at the end of this week a report entitled A surfeit of children in Europe which is about the alarming phenomenon of Foreign Unaccompanied Minors disappearing from institutions in France, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland. What are the main findings of the report?

Sofia Hedjam (author of the report): One of the main result of the report shows that disappearance of children from institutions is not something occasional that it’s a phenomenon which unfortunately affects most of the institutions which welcome children and in some cases rates of disappearance can reach 50 %.

The second thing that we noticed is that within the same country it is very difficult to find consistent and uniformed data about the number of children first who were welcome and then who disappeared. Another interesting thing is to see that to describe and to speak about the phenomenon it is very difficult to find within professionals a same or uniform term to describe this phenomenon… So some of the people are going to speak about disappearance other ones about running away, departures …

What are the main recommendations from this publication?

Sofia Hedjam: Among the recommendations that Terre des hommes proposes the main one is the harmonization, the importance of harmonization of care and data within the same country. Because we can’t properly protect the children if we keep having different approaches between French regions or Swiss cantons.

Another recommendation should be maybe the collaboration between the states. We met during this research many children who said that they travel from countries to others… These children are on the move, and it is a cross-border phenomenon so the collaboration between EU states or countries of origin with countries of destination are essential because the protection that we offer to this children can not stop at borders.

I will finish with a very important recommendation, is the principle of precaution after disappearance. Because we are talking about minors who are in a foreign country and without the parents, so the fact that they travel alone doesn’t make them adults. So until we are sure that after the disappearance the child is safe we have to stop I think the cliché regarding these children like “don’t worry, he is used to travel or he might be in England or”…

So for sure, on one hand, we can not say that all the children who disappear are trafficked because it’s not true, and saying this is lying, but on another hand, we can not keep saying that they are fine and everything is ok for them if we don’t know where they are. This category of children is especially vulnerable and the fact that they travel a lot doesn’t make them adult.