Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
CHILDREN ON THE MOVE<br />
With no family to help them, unaccompanied minors<br />
have been killed, beaten, starved and raped by smugglers.<br />
Save the Children states that 7,900 unaccompanied<br />
minors have crossed so far in 2016, representing 90<br />
percent of all child arrivals and about 15 percent of<br />
total arrivals.<br />
Most of the new arrivals are aged 14 to 17, but unaccompanied<br />
children as young as nine and 10 are<br />
becoming an increasingly familiar sight. In rare cases,<br />
children as young as five make the journey to Europe<br />
alone, almost always following the death of a parent<br />
or relative.<br />
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical staff estimates<br />
that almost nine out of ten of all new arrivals in Italy<br />
“The strangest thing about war<br />
is that you get used to feeling<br />
scared. I wouldn’t have believed<br />
that’’<br />
have experienced some kind of psychological trauma,<br />
but only very few will get the level of care that they<br />
need.<br />
Many arrivals report having their feet burnt by hot pokers<br />
in order to stop them running away. One survivor<br />
told aid workers that they saw a Gambian boy being<br />
shot dead by smugglers just for asking for more food<br />
and water. In June 2016, the bodies of 32 migrants<br />
abducted by people smugglers, including 20 migrant<br />
children, were found in the Niger desert.<br />
In Lebanon, according to Freedom Fund group, up to<br />
70 percent of Syrian refugee children are forced into<br />
slave labor. In the eastern Bekaa Valley on the border<br />
with Syria, the report added, all Syrian children are put<br />
to work, with many being exposed to hazardous conditions<br />
with pay as little as US$1 a day. “The more you<br />
have children outside of school, the more likely they<br />
are going to be working,” the mother of a five-yearold<br />
warns. “And as long as these children do not have<br />
access to schools, they are expected to go to work.”<br />
A full 3.7 million school-aged refugee children have no<br />
school to go to, the UN refugee agency reported.<br />
Gulistan loves houses. Back home in Aleppo, Syria, he used to enjoy<br />
walking around the city looking at them. Now, many of his favourite<br />
buildings have been destroyed by the war.
Change language