Data that BIRN has obtained show that more than 160 migrants and refugees currently in the Balkans are unaccompanied children or children separated from parents.
Most are staying in collective centres, hostels, asylum centres, parks, or in outdoor areas, in Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Bosnia.
Traveling alone on the new Balkan route towards Western Europe exposes them to numerous dangers such as hunger, human traffickers and sexual abuse and exploitation.
The topic of unaccompanied child refugees and migrants has risen up the international news agenda since the US started controversially separating migrant children from their parents on the border with Mexico.
President Donald Trump’s wife Melania has added to the furore by intervening in the debate to say that she “hates to see children separated from their families”.
Official data meanwhile show that the number of people of all ages using Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Serbia as a new transit route to reach Western Europe is rising rapidly.
Serbia
The 18 reception and asylum centres managed by Serbia’s Commissariat for Refugees and Migration currently host 682 children – 410 boys and 272 girls, the Commissariat told BIRN, adding that this number makes up a quarter of the total number of refugees and migrants in Serbia.
“Of the total number of children [i.e. 672], 75 are unaccompanied minors,” it noted.
The Commissariat underlined that it takes care to ensure that unaccompanied minors are placed in separate rooms from those where single adults stay.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninaight
