A four-year-old girl who reached Italy without her parents on a boat carrying migrants from Tunisia in October was repatriated on Thursday, authorities said. A judge in Sicily ruled she should be returned on a request by Tunisian authorities.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that unaccompanied and underage refugees can bring their family to the EU even if they are already married.
More than 10,000 unaccompanied minors have already arrived in Italy by boat since the beginning of 2022. At least 30% reside in Sicily, and are looked after by various projects until they become adults. InfoMigrants visited two such projects in Palermo.
More than half the minors who disembarked from the Ocean Viking ship on November 11 in the French port of Toulon are reported to have left the protective care in which they were placed.
A four-year-old girl has reached Lampedusa without her family on an overcrowded migrant boat. Her parents and sister were left behind in Tunisia after the boat left in a hurry. A children's rights activist brought attention to the case on social media.
As large numbers of migrants continue to reach Italian shores, many of those who end up in the northern region of Milan are minors traveling alone. That poses special challenges for the city, the deputy mayor Lamberto Bertolé tells InfoMigrants.
Greece has succesfully relocated over 1,200 migrant unaccompanied children in the last two years to other EU countries, claims the Athens government.
Italian police said they arrested 18 unaccompanied migrant minors who had arbitrarily left their shelters and were involved in drug dealing on the main squares of Modena, in the region of Emilia Romagna.
French police evacuated a camp of about 354 migrants on the outskirts of Paris on Wednesday. The authorities said this was the 15th such operation since the beginning of 2022.
A German state politician has voiced "increasing doubts" about a fatal police operation in the city of Dortmund. In early August, a police officer shot a 16-year-old unaccompanied minor from Senegal several times after he allegedly approached officers with a knife.
The Pro Asyl charity in Germany has called for the dismissal of the trial against three young migrants accused of terrorism in Malta. The migrants from Guinea and Ivory Coast were rescued in the Central Mediterranean in 2019 by a freighter, which brought them to Malta.
Youngsters, little more then children, incarcerated and tried like adults, are being charged as 'smugglers' upon their arrival in Italy. While the real human traffickers remain in Libya. The Italian news agency ANSA has collected some of their stories.