Psychological support for underage migrants was at the center of a congress organized at the European Parliament's information office in Milan. The event was attended by European lawmakers, psychologists and representatives of organizations including Save the Children and Unicef.
Over 4,000 of the 24,000 people who reached Italy's shores in the first trimester of 2017 were children. A reported 2,293 were travelling alone. The psychological distress experienced by migrants, in particular children and abuse victims, is too often ignored by immigration policies, according to Patrizia Toia, a member of the European Parliament with Italy's ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD). ''This theme is often left out of migration policies while it should be part of the debate in a significant way, not only as far as children are concerned but also for women who suffer abuse and violence,'' she noted. Francesca Moneti, a senior child protection specialist at Unicef, said the "European Union should issue a statement April 12 on the theme of the protection of migrant children'' This would be in line with new legislation approved by the Italian parliament in March this year focusing on the protection of unaccompanied migrant children. Moneti said the legislation is the first in Europe to give migrant children the same rights enjoyed by Italian minors, ''promoting the protection and inclusion of minors through the figure of a voluntary guardian who is in charge of their education, health care and socialization''. Since last June Unicef has been operating in Italy, both on coast guard vessels and migrant hosting centers, thanks to a protocol signed with the interior ministry. Moneti said migrant children show ''extraordinary resilience'' yet need help both individually and collectively. Marco Guadagnino, a communications manager for international programs at Save the Children, noted that there are children who still live in a war-torn country, like Syrian minors. ''Some 80% of them experienced some kind of violence, 70% suffer from nighttime incontinence and experience an increase in aggressive or self-harming behavior. This occurs in a country where only 20% of medical centers can offer some type of psychological support and where NGOs have a hard time working''. Guadagnino spoke about children who are under so much stress that they have expressed the wish to die, including a child whose school friends were all killed, or a six-year-old girl who hoped to be injured so she could go to the hospital. Migrant children are also under acute stress, he concluded, citing the 5,000 minors who live in a difficult situation in Greece, including a child who used bright colors to paint the boat that had taken him to Europe shortly after his arrival.''Three months later he only used shades of gray to paint the same rubber dinghy as it was sinking''.
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