From 2011 to 2016, the number of unaccompanied foreign minors under age 14 has tripled in Italy. The the number of females, some extremely young, within the category has quadrupled. The statistics are part of a new report from Save the Children Italy, titled "Atlas of Foreign Unaccompanied Minors in Italy."
According to the report, the number of unaccompanied foreign minors under age 14 tripled, while the number of females quadrupled in the last five years. The "Atlas" was released on the occasion of World Refugee Day 2017, and includes data, stories, and maps of the minors' journeys in Italy.
One in six migrants arriving in Italy in 2016 came unaccompanied
Between January 2011 and December 2016, 62,672 unaccompanied minors arrived in Italy. The majority of these were from Eritrea, Egypt, Gambia, Somalia, Nigeria, and Syria. Their numbers grew six times between 2011 (4,209) and 2016 (25,846).
The overall percentage of unaccompanied minor arrivals among all refugees was six percent in 2011, but in 2016, it grew to one unaccompanied minor for every six migrants. Eighty one percent of the unaccompanied minors present in reception centres at the end of 2016 were between the ages of 16-18 and there has been a consistent increase in the numbers of those between the ages of 0-14.
In 2012, unaccompanied minors through age 14 in Italy totaled 698, while in 2016 that number had grown to 2,050. The gender gap has also been closing, with a four-fold increase in female unaccompanied minors between 2012 and 2016, going from 440 to 1,832 respectively. Between 2011-2016, 22,586 minors went missing.
'Invisible minors'
A particular area of vulnerability includes the so-called "invisible" minors, who, having other European countries as their final destinations, have gone missing within the Italian reception system and entrusted themselves to human traffickers to complete their journeys, at great risk to their safety.
Save the Children said that nearly all of the 22,586 unaccompanied minors that arrived in Italy between 2011 and 2016 from Eritrea (11,251), Somalia (5,618), Syria (2,927), and Afghanistan (2,790) have gone missing. At the end of 2016, Italian migrant reception centres reported over 6,500 missing unaccompanied minors, the majority of whom were Eritrean, Somalian or Egyptian.
These "invisible" children are mainly in Rome and Milan, cities that serve as migrant transit points, as well as at northern Italian borders. In the Italian capital in 2016, Save the Children came into contact with 2,471 children travelling northward, aged between 10 and 17 years old. A still-insufficient reception and integration system Following their disembarking on southern Italian shores, unaccompanied minors generally get transferred to hotspots, despite the fact that they're not supposed to be housed there.
Stay times at the hotspots can range from a few days to several months if places within group homes can't be found. The system of initial reception for minors has been spread across 21 ministry-level projects since 2016, which are supposed to ensure adequate standards for a total of about 1,000 beds across 11 regions, which is a very limited capacity when compared to arrival numbers.
However, the majority of unaccompanied minors that arrive in Italy want to stay in the country, according to the report. In 2016 in the EU, Italy was second only to Germany for asylum requests by unaccompanied foreign minors, with 6,020 requests. Even for these minors, the reception and integration system is insufficient. The Italian SPRAR system (Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees) has about 2,000 beds for unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.