Germany "No trace of youth assistance"

January 1, 2001

The Lutheran Press Service published an article about the problematic situation of foreign unaccompanied minors in Germany – a country that signed the Convention of the Rights of the Child with objections. According to the article, *German authorities have a tendency of considering children above 16 as adults, and so they are put in adult facilities without any possiblity for training or psychological counselling.

Comment: * German NGOs are promoting the idea of probono guardians for foreign unaccompanied minors to ensure that their best interest is being considered. The article also mentions the practice of bone testing, which is not a 100% sure procedure but still better than police wanting to define the age of the migrant by simply looking at them and disregarding their documents.

Even in countries which are supposed to apply the UN CRC for all children under 18 years of age, theory and practice are different. Unfortunately, foreign unaccompanied minors are considered foreigners first and then children. In Switzerland for example, there are only centers for unaccompanied minors who are asylum seekers. Those children migrate for several reasons: to escape conflicts, because they are abused by their family and some of them are exploited in Europe – while we promised them studies and a better future. For Doctor Dutertre, head of a French medical center specialized in migrants who are victims of torture, “the simple fact of being an unaccompanied minor means to be a victim”, it’s a trauma in itself. (See a recent article on this subject here – in French)

Germany is not the only country without numbers on how many unaccompanied minors arrive in their territory each year: this is the same situation in France and Belgium. This lack of information could also be interpreted as a will to hide the reality. The evaluation of the age is also a key question. In some French districts, the bone test is often requested. Some children, minors on their papers, are declared as adults and have no protection.

To compare the German context with other European countries, the system of guardianship is rarely used in France and, in Switzerland, a guardian can be appointed only in case of asylum seeker. In Belgium, a Guardianship Office for unaccompanied minors has been created since May 2004, but there are not enough guardians, their work is not enough supervised and one guardian can ‘manage’ up to 40 cases at the same time.

This article shows clearly the different problems an unaccompanied minor has to face. However, it does not refer to the main one: the disappearance of foreign unaccompanied minors from public centers. In France, Belgium and Switzerland, the rate of disappearance is almost 50%. What are the risks for those children in the streets? According to the specialists, there are numerous: violence, health problems, sexual exploitation, black labor, child trafficking.

The original article can be found here (in German)

On the same subject read also: ‘These Afghan minors crossing Europe’