It is time to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to protecting unaccompanied children who are on the run from persecution, United Nations Special Representative Virginia Gamba is urging.
“I call on stakeholders to start implementing what we have discussed for three years. We need to ensure a human rights approach and that whatever transit or destination countries do, they do it in the best interests of the child, the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict told the Times of Malta.
Ms Gamba is in Malta for the third edition of the Lost in Migration Conference: Global Strategies and Political Commitments, organised by the President’s Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society and Missing Children Europe.
Children on the move include those whose families are trying to protect them from army recruitment, sexual abuse or abduction, while other fleeing minors have been left orphans by the conflict.
She noted that some children who were abducted by armed groups and managed to run away also followed the flows of displaced people.
In 2015, Europol identified 10,000 displaced unaccompanied children, a figure that has increased six times. Since 2015, when the problem was first identified in Europe, there has been a lot of policy-generation in the European Union – a discussion in which Malta had a central role, especially when it comes to children, she said.
Ms Gamba referred among others to the Global Compact for Migration, which was adopted at the end of last year.
The inter-governmentally negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the UN, stated clearly that statelessness should not remain an issue for unaccompanied migrants.
It had also noted that unaccompanied children had a right to a family, so they needed to be either reunified with their relatives or provided with a family environment.
The compact also called for improved data collection and identification of the most vulnerable children.
The UN, Ms Gamba said, called for the implementation of such recommendations, which would see member states working with NGOs, the UN and the EU.
In launching the conference, President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca insisted that the unacceptable lack of national protection and ineffective solidarity among EU states was exposing migrant children to violence, exploitation, trafficking, and abuse.
She said she hoped this year’s conference would help increase pressure on addressing the “horrendous situation where thousands of children go missing on European soil”.
According to the European Migration Network, more than 30,000 unaccompanied children went missing between 2014 and 2017, and the number of missing cases that are being solved is actually decreasing.
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In her address, she noted that preventing unsafe migration and the subsequent horrendous trafficking of children was the first step to effectively tackle the issue of unaccompanied migrant children.
To achieve this goal, the involvement of countries of origin and of transit was fundamental, she insisted.
Ms Coleiro Preca said that unfortunately, we were still a long way from effectively addressing the needs of children who have been victims of all sorts of violence, before and during their departure.
“I am sad to note that the necessary referrals to national child protection systems are not always implemented, nor are they treated with the necessary urgency,” she said.
Delays in determining the status of children who arrived in Europe and were considered ‘stateless’ was another challenge that further compounded the difficulty of assuring their rightful protection.
It was therefore crucial that authorities pinpointed appropriate people who were responsible for child protection at every stage of the identification and registration, she added.
On the other hand, frontline European states must be supported by the “entire family of European countries” to ensure the necessary expertise was provided in a consistent and sustainable manner.