Koumba, from Guinea, arrived in France at the end of 2017 along with her two daughters, then aged two and four. She hoped to spare them the traumatic experience of female circumcision and wanted to offer them a good education. Two and a half years later, she says she has lost all hope for her future in France.
A number of EU member states want to take in refugee children stuck in Greece. However, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn now says the coronavirus pandemic has made that impossible.
Sixty-five humanitarian organizations have signed a document calling on the European Union to transfer unaccompanied minors off of the Greek islands and into safety in their territory.
Lots of you have been asking us questions related to family status and migration. So we decided to gather up the most frequently asked questions and put them to a legal expert in the field of migration. Lawyers at the firm Schlun and Elseven which has offices in Aachen, Düsseldorf and Cologne responded to us. Here is what they said:
Aid agencies in Greece are warning that unaccompanied migrant children are at grave risk at overcrowded migrant camps. Many of them are seeking voluntary detention at police cells to escape the camps. Aid agencies want the Greek government to beef up efforts to reunite unaccompanied minors with their families. But most European nations are not willing to help. Anthee Carassava has more.
Among the migrants that disembarked from the Ocean Viking in Italy on Wednesday were 149 minors. Many of them experienced terrible things on their migration journeys, in particular in Libya, they told aid workers.
A series of five memorial "stumbling stones" have been placed at five schools in Rome in memory of a 14-year-old Malian student who died on a boat in the Mediterranean with his report card sewn into his pocket.
The Italian education ministry has decided to relaunch the observatory for the integration of foreign students and inter-cultural exchange after a two-year break. The goal: to fight prejudices, and to boost multiculturalism in Italian schools.
Basma, Jad and Ma'zooza are about to join the Sesame Street family. The trio of new Arabic-speaking characters will help teach children in the Middle East to read and write, as well as process the trauma of displacement.
UNICEF demands that Greece offer better protection to refugee and migrant minors. There are about 1,100 children currently housed in migrant camps and reception centers across the Greek islands — the highest number registered since April 2016.
Hundreds of children in Greece are in desperate need of the warmth and safety of a family. Some of them have lost their own parents on treacherous migration routes to Europe, leaving them alone and vulnerable. A non-governmental organization, METAdrasi, runs a foster care program for these children so that they can stay in a secure and loving environment while they wait for family reunification with their relatives in other states of the EU.
Some 80 refugee kids in camps near Athens have taken part in a reforestation program on Mount Pentelis, one of Greece's most famous mountains.