The study said more than 45,000 migrants have reached Italian shores by crossing the Mediterranean thus far in 2017, and more than 5,500 of them were unaccompanied minors. The top three countries that unaccompanied minors came from were Guinea, with 579 minors; Gambia, with 565 minors; and Bangladesh, with 489 minors. These numbers were cited from UN Refugee Agency UNHCR data. 

ISMU provided data from the Italian labour ministry showing there were 15,500 unaccompanied minors registered in migrant reception centres throughout the country as of March 31  this year. The number of female minors - who, as of March 31, comprised 7.1% of minors overall for a total of 1,091 - has risen since 2015 when it was 5%. Among the female minor population, 74% are between the ages of 16 and 17, and 15% are between the ages of 7 and 14. 

Of the male unaccompanied minors, 61% are between the ages of 16 and 17, and 24% are between the ages of 7 and 14. At 48%, nearly half of all female unaccompanied minors come from Nigeria, for a total of 528 young women. Eritrea follows with 152 females (14% of the overall female unaccompanied minor population) and Albania comes in third with 95 females (8.7% overall). 

Meanwhile, many of the unaccompanied young migrants who were previously registered at migrant reception centres have since gone missing. As of March 31, there were a total of 5,170 who had disappeared, the majority of whom were young men from Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Minors often go missing because they don't want to be hosted according to the rules of the reception centres, and many of them are trying to make their way to relatives or friends who live in northern European countries. The Italian Interior Ministry, in its recent report on missing persons in Italy, said nearly 28,000 unaccompanied foreign minors have gone missing between 1974 and 2016, with an increase of almost 45% between 2015 and 2016.