priredio: APC       foto:  / Thibault Vandermersch

London,16. juna –  Deca migranti na severu Francuske svakodnevno su prisiljena na kriminal i prostituciju kako bi dobili mesto u migrantskim kampovima, ili obe?anje  da ?e pre?i u Britaniju  saopštava Unicef. Ova agencija Ujedinjenih nacija  poziva vlasti da u?ine više kako bi zaštitili decu koja putuju bez pratnje i kojima stalno preti seksualna eksploatacija, nasilje i prinudne rad.

“Znamo da ovaj problem datira od pre više od decenije, ali je postao mnogo ekstremniji i ozbiljniji tokom protekle godine sa pogoršanjem globalne izbegli?ke krize”, rekla je Melani Tef, visoki savetnik za humanitarna pitanja i politiku Unicefa u Britaniji.

UNICEF procenjeuje da je 500 dece bez pratnje odraslih živi u sedam kampovima na severnoj obali Francuske, uklju?uju?i Kale i Denkerk.

Oko 2.000 dece je prošlo kroz ove logore od juna 2015. do aprila 2016. godine, navodi se.

Ve?i broj dece rekao je toj agenciji UN  koja je intervjuisala 60 dece izme?u 11 i 17 godina starosti iz Avganistana, Egipta, Erireje, Etiopije, Irana, Iraka, Kuvajta, Sirije i Vijetnama koji žive u kampovima duž La Manša, u periodu izme?u januara i aprila ove godine da ih u zarobljeništvu drže razli?ite kriminalne grupe koje traže otkup od njihovih porodica, dok su drugi prisiljeni da rade pod skoro robovlasni?kim uslovima kako bi mogla da plate dalje putovanje.

Unicef navodi da im krijum?ari traže od 4.000 do 5.500 funti da ih prevezu do Britanije, pa deca traže alternativne na?ine da tamo otuputuju, pri ?emu se neki kriju i u kamionima  hladnja?ama koji putuju za Britaniju.

Deca iz Avganistana, rekao je UNICEF imaju najve?i strah od toga da budu silovana.

“Deci nije obezbe?eno školovanje, a ve?inu no?i provode tako što satima hodaju i pokušavaju da usko?e u kamione kako bi se prevezli do Britanije”, rekla je Tef.

One je dodala da deca koja žive u migrantskim kampovima ?esto moraju da plate pristup tuševima, a i prisiljeni su da otvaraju vrata od kamiona u pokretu kako bi migranti uskakali u njih.

Deca u kampovima ostaju u proseku pet meseci, mada neki ostaju i devet meseci, a neki i više od godinu dana, navodi Unicef.

Od oko 206.200 ljudi koliko ih je stiglo u Evropu preko mora od po?etka godine do 4. juna, svaka tre?a osoba je dete, saopštio je Unicef u utorak.

 

Stranded in France, migrant children forced into crime, prostitution every day: UNICEF

London,16. juni (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Migrant children in northern France are forced into crime and prostitution on a daily basis to secure a place to stay in migrant camps or the promise of passage to Britain, the U.N. children’s agency said on Thursday.

UNICEF said sexual exploitation, violence and forced labor were a constant threat for children traveling alone and urged the authorities to do more to protect them.

“We know this has been a long-running problem for over a decade but it’s got much more extreme and severe in the last year with the increase in the global refugee crisis,” said Melanie Teff, senior humanitarian advocacy and policy adviser at UNICEF UK.

“We heard sad stories of girls charging 5 euros ($5.60) to be sexually exploited in order to get into the camp, or to start paying towards their passage to the UK,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Of the roughly 206,200 people who arrived in Europe by sea this year to June 4, one in three was a child, UNICEF said on Tuesday, citing figures from the U.N. refugee agency.

Many eventually end up in camps such as the shanty town nicknamed the “Jungle” outside France’s northern port of Calais. UNICEF said there were an estimated 500 unaccompanied children living in seven camps on the northern coast of France, including Calais and Dunkirk.

Some 2,000 children have passed through the camps since June 2015, it said.

Several children told the aid agency that they were held by different criminal groups who demanded ransom from their families, while others were forced to work under almost slave-like conditions to pay for their journey.

Children from Afghanistan told UNICEF that being raped was their biggest fear.

Faced with demands from traffickers to pay between 4,000 pounds ($5,660) and 5,500 pounds ($7,790) each to cross to Britain, children were looking for alternative ways to make the journey – with some hiding in refrigerated lorries, UNICEF said.

“There isn’t schooling being provided, and most nights the children are walking for hours and trying to jump into lorries,” Teff said.

“They’re living in a very, very tense situation and a lot of them talk about how they’re going crazy from the boredom.”

Teff said children living in migrant camps often had to pay to access showers or were forced to open lorries so others could jump in.

On average children stayed in the camps for five months before moving on, although some remained there for nine months and one child was stuck there for more than a year, UNICEF said.

The agency interviewed 60 children between 11 and 17 from Afghanistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria and Vietnam living in camps along the English Channel, between January and April 2016.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis; additional reporting by Alex Whiting. Editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)