Between 2018 and 2020, more than 18,000 unaccompanied foreign minors were registered in Europe. A journalists' collective called "Lost in Europe" says the children are at high risk of exploitation.
The number of migrants and asylum seekers who reached Europe in 2020 is the lowest it has been for a decade. But deaths and disappearances on sea routes – especially to the Canary Islands – remain alarmingly high, says a UN Migration report.
Fifty-two people were rescued from a boat south of the Canary Islands on Tuesday evening. Emergency services said that 10 of the migrants were suffering from hypothermia.
It was a busy weekend in the central Mediterranean. The Spanish rescue organization Open Arms said that it had picked up 146 migrants in two separate rescue operations. Meanwhile, the Tunisian navy said that it had picked up 25 from a shipwreck, with one person confirmed dead and about 22 missing.
The Jesuit Refugee Service in Italy, Centro Astalli, reiterated its appeal for the immediate evacuation of migrants from Libya, as well as the Greek Islands and the Balkans, after 43 migrants died in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya on January 19.
Nearly 1,600 unaccompanied minors are currently reported as missing in Germany. Nearly 1,000 of them were reportedly aged between 14 and 17 years and just over 600 children were aged 13 and younger.
This month Eritrean-born Amanal Petros claimed the German marathon record. But the former refugee's victory remains tinged with pain at having lost contact with his mother and sisters in Ethiopia.
At least eight people have died and searches are continuing for at least one person believed to be missing after a boat capsized and sank off the Spanish Canary Islands on Tuesday evening.
The Spanish foreign minister met with her counterpart in Senegal on Sunday to talk about how the two countries can increase measures to deter potential migrants attempting to make the 1,500 kilometer Atlantic crossing from West Africa to the Canary Islands.
At least 140 people have drowned after a boat carrying around 200 migrants sank off the Senegalese coast, according to the UN migration agency. The shipwreck is the deadliest so far this year.
The International Organization for Migration said measures enacted by governments against the spread of the coronavirus, as well as the drop in the presence of search-and-rescue ships in the Mediterranean, are sparking concern over "invisible" migrant shipwrecks.
The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Friday expressed grave concerns for the fate of hundreds of migrants returned to Libya by the coast guard this year who are now unaccounted for. The organisation stressed that it is ''unacceptable for people rescued at sea to be returned to abuse, trafficking, and war'' and reiterated its call to the European Union for urgent action to establish a clear and swift disembarkation mechanism to end returns to Libya.