The report, published by the French NGO, Project Play, revealed devastating violence against children on the border and record child fatalities in 2024, during attempted Channel crossings.
Children and babies on board small boats crossing from northern France into the United Kingdom have been exposed to devastating violence, including being teargassed and being in the line of rubber bullets, a report has revealed.
Project Play, a French non-governmental organization, published the report "We Want to be Safe" last week, detailing the physical and psychological harm experienced by children and babies as a result of police violence, during attempts to cross the English Channel, as well as police actions in makeshifts camps where migrants live while they wait to attempt a crossing.
The report also called 2024 the worst year on record for child and adult deaths. Although no official data was published about their deaths, Project Play claims they counted 15 children between the ages of three days old and 16 years old killed at the UK-France border last year. Three of the deaths were attributed to crushing injuries. All in all, more children died attempting to cross the Channel in 2024 than in the previous four years combined, they said.
Children on small boats
The UK Home Office did not respond to InfoMigrants' email requesting comment regarding the allegations made in the report.
However, at the end of last week, British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC that she thought it was "totally appalling" that children in particular were being crushed to death on boats attempting to cross the Channel.
Cooper went on to say during the interview with BBC Radio 4's Today Programme that everyone arriving on a boat where a child had died should face prosecution, either in the UK or France for "endangering life at sea."
Kate O'Neil, Advocacy Coordinator with Project Play reportedly told the news agency PA, that children were often placed in the middle of the boats, making their position "more dangerous" and liable to crushing as more and more migrants board the boats.
O'Neil said that increased securitization tactics deployed by the French authorities, were only making things worse. She also claimed that many of the tactics, including intervening in shallow waters, were not so new and that those working with migrants on the French coast, had been getting more and more testimonies of similar interventions "for a long time."
Slashing of migrant boats with knives
The publication of the Project Play report came in the wake of news that French law enforcement measures to stop people from reaching the United Kingdom through the English Channel may be about to get tougher. The first six months of the year also saw record-high numbers of crossing attempts and arrivals in the UK.
The latest figures on daily crossings released by the UK government indicate a total of 19,982 arrivals during the first six months of the year. The number marked a 40 percent increase, compared with the same period last year.
On Friday, the British television channel BBC published a video showing French police preventing a migrant boat, already in the water, from crossing the English Channel, on a French beach near Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais). People, who included women and children, were waist-deep in water, attempting to board a small boat, when law enforcement officers slashed the boat with Stanley knives and ordered the people to return to the beach.
As the small boat began to sink, people could be heard screaming, fearing that they would be crushed by the weight of the other passengers. Subsequently, spokespeople for the French authorities told the BBC that everyone exited the boat and the water safe and sound and no one was hurt.
A few hours after the news report aired, the British government praised French law enforcement for "toughening" up practices to stop migrants from reaching the United Kingdom through the English Channel.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron are expected to announce new plans for French police to do more to block small boats crossing the Channel this week, during a three-day French state visit to the UK lasting from July 8 to July 10.
Children affected by migration experiences
Katie Hall, Advocacy Lead at Project Play told InfoMigrants that the most commonly observed signs of trauma among the children included in the study, as well as those Project Play works with, include difficulty regulating emotions, attention, and focus due to being in situations of toxic stress or exposure to traumatic events.
Hall, however, stressed that Project Play refrains from referring to children as "traumatized."
"We are not child psychologists and therefore not qualified to make this judgment, nor do we want to make unfounded assumptions about the children we work with," she said.
As Hall explained, while adults typically process their feelings and experiences by talking about them, for children, the unpacking of experiences is more commonly done through play. It is in this space that children are given a space to talk about, play through, and begin to process what they have experienced.
Among the children that Project Play works with, the NGO has seen this processing emerge through children's drawings of shipwrecks, imaginary play scenarios of police evictions, or using toy cars to represent police convoys.
"Crucially, throughout 2024, we observed a sharp increase in the number of children directly disclosing experiences of violence to our team -- often related to violence from the state whilst attempting to cross the channel and evictions of living sites," said Hall.
Gaps in social care for young migrants
Access to formal social care remains extremely limited for many migrant children in France, with NGOs like Project Play, Refugee Women's Center, and Secours Catholique stepping in to fill the gap. These organizations provide emergency accommodation and casework support, but their efforts fall far short of the comprehensive care a state system could offer.
Mental health support is similarly lacking. Doctors without Borders or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) currently assists a small number of children, but long waiting lists mean many families go without timely help—delays that can have devastating consequences.
Hall shared that in July 2024, 10-month-old Mohammed died after being unable to access the urgent healthcare he needed. "In another case, a family who lost a child during a Channel crossing attempt struggled to find psychological support for their other grieving children, blocked by service access barriers and a climate shaped by hostile policies," she said.
Project Play is calling for greater cross-border accountability for deaths and incidents in the Channel, urging both governments to prioritize life-saving operations over surveillance, publish data on fatalities, and provide adequate support to survivors of shipwrecks and failed crossings. It also demands an end to the criminalization of people on the move, including reversing laws that target those arriving irregularly—such as unaccompanied children forced to steer boats.
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