More than 50,000 underage migrants disappeared in Europe in three years

Tuesday 30 April

In the past three years, 51,433 children within Europe have disappeared from asylum seekers’ centres. This is evident from research by the journalist collective Lost in Europe in collaboration with the Belgian media VRT, Knack and De Standaard. These minors are unknown where they left off.

These are children who have travelled unaccompanied to Europe and have reported to a centre of asylum seekers in a Member State. They were registered as missing after their disappearance. Usually it concerns children between 12 and 18 years, but also very young children 'doing 'twig'.

The number of more than 50,000 is more than a doubling compared to the three years before. In the period from 2018 to 2020, 18,292 missing persons were recorded. The researchers have seen a significant increase in children coming from Afghanistan in recent years, where the Taliban have been in power since 2021. In addition, Austria now has more insight into the figures, and the numbers are also substantial.

“But the actual numbers are much higher,” says Geesje van Haren of journalist collective Lost in Europe. Of the 31 European countries where data were accessed about these missing persons, 16 countries provided it. Greece, Spain and France could not or did not want to provide any data. “And those are large countries with huge migration flows,” Van Haren emphasizes.

Cocktail for exploitation

At the top of the list is Italy, with nearly 23,000 missing minors. That country is often the first country in Europe and the young migrants usually have a different destination country in mind, for example because they have family there.

It also happens that migrants deliberately dive under the radar, because they would rather live in illegality than have to return to their country of origin. They also regularly fall into the hands of human traffickers, after which they are exploited and have to work in hemp cultivation or prostitution.

“These young people are extremely vulnerable to this, also in the Netherlands,” says Van Haren. In the past three years, 15,404 of the child-year-old asylum seekers have been registered. Of those, 850 have disappeared.

"In the Netherlands, unaccompanied minor asylum seekers are taken care of in hotels. They receive too little education, there is too little guidance and hardly any daytime activities. They have no money and they have debt. It is the cocktail for exploitation.”

Fingerprints of files

There are advanced plans to register this group centrally within Europe. The idea is to keep fingerprints of young people. "A very good development", says Van Haren, but she also makes comments. “For example, we know stories of young people who have to file their fingerprints under pressure from criminal organizations.”

The solution is not for grabs. “We are very much against human trafficking on the outskirts of Europe. But doing something about human trafficking, we are not so good at it.”

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