Afghan boys seeking opportunity in Europe strain youth services
By Caroline Brothers
International Herald Tribune / August 30, 2009


PARIS - Hundreds of lone Afghan boys are making their way across Europe. Although a few are as young as 12, most are teenagers seeking an education and the future that has not materialized in their own country, which is still struggling with poverty and violence eight years after the end of Taliban rule.

Their unauthorized arrival is adding a new dimension to the issue of clandestine migration, while challenging the protection systems of the nations they cross - which, under national and international law, have an obligation to provide for them.

“Afghanistan is hemorrhaging its youth into Europe,’’ said Pierre Henry, director of France Terre d’Asile, an organization that works with the European Union, the UN refugee agency, and the French government on asylum affairs.

The European Union does not record statistics on the number of foreign children who are wandering Europe alone, and aid groups and government agencies keep records that vary greatly.

But requests for asylum by unaccompanied Afghan minors suggest that there are thousands across Europe. The number of requests provide a baseline, analysts say, since there are many more youths who do not seek asylum.

Blanche Tax, a senior policy officer at the European bureau of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said that last year 3,090 Afghan minors requested asylum in Austria, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Germany - the EU countries where their numbers rose the most sharply - compared with 1,489 in those same countries in 2007. In Britain alone, she said, requests increased from 1,100 in 2007 to 1,700 last year.

Overall, the Separated Children in Europe Program estimates that there are 100,000 unaccompanied children from non-EU countries within the European Union, with many requesting no protection in any form. The program is run jointly by the International Save the Children Alliance and UNHCR.

This year, for the first time, Afghans have overtaken sub-Saharan Africans as the biggest group of isolated foreign minors to request admission to child protection services in Paris, said Charlotte Aveline, an adviser on child protection at Paris City Hall.

“Some arrive very beaten, very tired, but if they stay put for just one week they very quickly become adolescents again,’’ said Jean-Michel Centres of Exiles10, a citizens’ organization that works with Afghan migrants.

“First they ask where they can go to have papers, then where they can go to school, and where after that they can get a job,’’ Centres said.

Five youths interviewed for this article told of being exploited as underage labor, of dodging police violence in European ports, or of risking death under wheels of trucks when they hitched rides under the chassis.

Sotiria Goula, general secretary for welfare at the Greek Heath Ministry, said her nation had been overwhelmed by the number of asylum-seekers crossing its borders.

The Save the Children charity has called a meeting, under the auspices of Sweden’s presidency of the European Union, for Sept. 15 to address protection for minors across the bloc