Unaccompanied minors made up 7% of all asylum applications in 2019, according to the EU's statistics office, Eurostat. The number, however, is about 20% down from applications filed the previous year.
There were about 3,000 fewer asylum applications lodged by unaccompanied minors in 2019 compared to 2018. The number has been dropping each year since the peak of the so-called "refugee crisis" in 2015, when roughly 92,000 minors under the age of 18 arrived in the EU alone.
Majority of youths from Afghanistan
Eurostat said that 85% of the unaccompanied minors were male, with about 65% being 16 and 17-year-olds. The majority of them (30%) came from Afghanistan, followed by arrivals from Syria and Pakistan at 10% each. There were also minors from Somalia, Iraq and Guinea applying for asylum in the EU, with each nationality making up about 5% of the applications filed in 2019.
The majority of the unaccompanied minors filed their 2019 asylum claims in Greece, followed by Germany. In 2018, Germany was the number one country for asylum claims by unaccompanied minors.
with AFP, KNA