Unaccompanied minor refugees are taken care of by the youth office in Germany and special rules apply to them. What happens to those kids and teenagers who arrive with their families? Around 350,000 children and adolescents came to Germany in 2015 and 2016. They live with their families in German refugee accommodations. The child care agency of the United Nations (UNICEF) and the association for unaccompanied minor refugees have argued in their study "Childhood in Waiting" that the accommodation for children and adolescents is not child-friendly and they live far too long in harmful conditions. In an interview, UNICEF press officer Ninja Charbonneau explained the assertions in the study. In your study you examined how children live in refugee accommodations in Germany. What is your conclusion? Ninja Charbonneau: Generally, many young girls and boys who fled with their families to Germany spend too much time in refugee accommodations. The situation varies from home to home, place to place, state to state, and in many places good and very committed work is done. But we also note that a lot of children and adolescents are in not safe or suitable accommodations. Why are accompanied children and adolescents in danger? Accompanied minors are seen as extensions of their parents and are therefore often overlooked - therefore we want to bring attention to their situation with this study. Child refugees accompanied by their parents are not taken care of by the youth office like unaccompanied minor refugees and they bear the full brunt of the asylum law. This means that many of them have to spend months or even years in large accommodations and face delayed access to education. What types of problems exist in the accommodations? Children and adolescents are often not protected sufficiently, for example because there are no closable rooms or toilets and showers everywhere. Sometimes, there is a lack of hygience. In addition it’s very difficult for the children to have to live with strangers  in a small room. It's not very peaceful and there is very little private space. How often are children and adolescents victimized in the accommodations? There are no dependable statistics - only the reported cases are documented and that is a very small proportion. Every case is one too many. The feeling of insecurity is also a problem: many employees of refugee accommodations report that children and adolescents experience violence or feel unsafe. Many of them have fled from war and violence and have come a long way. They need calm and stability. Just the feeling that they are not secure is damaging to their development. Are there places where the situation is especially serious? One can not make a sweeping statement on that. There is not any reliable information about how many children or adolescents are being accommodated in each state shelter or how well those accommodations are being managed. This lack of information must be improved. The UN Convention on the rights of the child says that all children have the same right and entitlement to protection and education. How are these afforded to refugee children in Germany? We acknowledge that for a large group of refugee children and adolescents in Germany are not in a good situation. Education in Germany is under the purview of the states rather than the federal government. The age in which children have to go to school or are entitled to a place in school differs from state to state. In some states, children begin going to school only after they leave the reception center and a commune takes them in, but this could take months. This is a valuable amount of time that these students lose. How long do kids have to spend in the initial reception centers?     Many children have to stay many months or even over a year in the big refugee accommodation centers. This varies depending on their country of origin and their perspective on staying. Refugees from so-called safe countries of origin could be obliged to stay for an unlimited amount of time in a reception facility. For others, according to current legislation, the maximum amount of time that can be spent in a reception facility is six months. The current draft bill on the obligation to leave Germany could lead to an increase in the number of people staying more than six months in reception facilities. That for us is a step in the wrong direction: children and adolescents should stay as little as possible in the collective accommodations and then, as soon as possible, move into smaller community accommodations or apartments. In any case, they should be granted access to education and training opportunities as soon as possible. Last year, the number of refugees arriving in Germany was considerably lesser than than in 2015. Has the decrease in numbers lightened the load on refugee accommodations? Yes and no. We see that emergency structures continue to exist in many places in Germany. In many regions, emergency accommodations have been closed, but many still exist. We observe that still many children and adolescents continue to live in these accommodations and also in converted gymnasiums and exhibition halls. Many refugees have a traumatic journey behind them - whether in the hands of human smugglers or they witnessed pain and misery.  Are the young people afflicted by this cared for in the accommodation centers? Not comprehensively. A refugee journey is traumatic in general for a child. It is an abrupt break with what is known. Not every child develops a trauma in the medical sense but the journey, for many children and adolescents, represents an emergency situation with a lot of stress. It very important that a child is take care of psychologically from the beginning. That is only partially the case and not the standard. We also hear that when children require therapy they often have to wait for a long amount of time. What do you recommend? Children should on principle only spend as little time as possible in large accommodations. If this is not possible on an organizational level, then certain minimum standards should apply to every accommodation in which children and adolescents are housed. For example, there should be separate toilets and rooms that can be shut. There should also be independent consultants that children should be able to turn to. A federal regulation specifying minimal standards for the protection of women and children in the refugee accommodations should be discussed. Furthermore, all German federal states should ensure that refugee kids go to school, kindergarten or receive other forms of education as soon as possible. That is not only important for the children but also a good investment for our society. This interview was conducted for DW by Charlotte Hauswedell. Translation: Wesley Dockery