The real asylum policies in Europe today largely ignore children among refugees. They are often not listened to and rather treated as if they were possessions belonging to their parents. It is often forgotten that they could have their own reasons for seeking protection. Some of them do.
When children arrive in a family group, the parents are regularly interviewed about the grounds for their asylum application, while often the minors are not given the opportunity to spell out their reasons.
When children arrive unaccompanied, the migration authorities tend to focus only on how to bring them back to their parents, ignoring that they have in many cases escaped from their country with the fullest support of their family. Continue reading “Refugee children should have a genuine chance to seek asylum”