Freedom for all (conditions apply).

Things have been pretty hectic around here. With Día Universal del Niño (Children's Day) and Día contra la Violencia de género (Day Against Gender Violence) coming up respectively on the 20th and 25th of November, Digmun has been relatively busy trying to organise fun and meaningful activities to celebrate and inform properly on each issue. And why wouldn't they; is quite literally in their official name: Asociación por la dignidad de mujeres, niños y niñas or Association for the dignity of women and children. 

So whilst the day against gender violence will be a week-long effort to educate and advertise, the first will be entirely dedicated to allowing all children we support to feel exactly that: children. To honour this, I will spend the next month talking about the children we work with, and the challenges they themselves or their families face daily. This first post will be a dummy's introduction to the issue of unaccompanied minors; because the problem is so incredibly complicated, I will have to relegate it to a basic introduction for the sake of understandability. A matter that is equally challenging and depressing, touching a basic human right that has come to gain prominent importance even in the hearts of the least empathic: education for all, without any conditions applying. Hopefully, we'll be able to scratch the surface of all the troubles and barriers that these children and their family have to confront to earn a chance at life.

There are two main categories that Digmun works with, with two entirely different level of needs. We work to provide basic language skills to MENAs (menores extranjeros no acompañados). In English, the definition is unaccompanied minors or separated children. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, unaccompanied minors are, quote,
"[minors] who have been separated from both parents and other relatives and are not being cared for by an adult who, by law or custom, is responsible for doing so." (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child).
Obviously, the definition is much wider and does not apply solely to migrants and asylum seekers. However, in Ceuta, and in Europe especially in this particular time of history, unaccompanied minors almost always is equivalent to an underage individual who is seeking asylum in any of the state members without the support and presence of his or her family. Numbers are staggering and have increased five-fold since 2010. As you can imagine, Ceuta hosts a big population of unaccompanied minors due to its reality as frontier city. If you come to Ceuta and you see a particularly dark skin-coloured young person, that does not reflect the stereotype that you have of either Moroccans or Spaniards, chances are that he or she is an underage child that has somehow managed to cross the Sahara desert and the fences of the frontier, and is now trying to earn enough money to cross into mainland Europe. 

MENAs are a tough demographic to work with. They might be in class one day, as any child below 16/18 years old should be, and they might as well vanish into the night the day after, boarded on some illegal boat promising a better life in the UK, France, Germany, Norway, or [...] fill in the blank with whichever wealthy European country you can think of. Sometimes it is frustrating because, with our knowledge of Europe, laws, bureaucracy and general ignorance that most of Europeans have in regards to these children's circumstances, they won't find their El Dorado by crossing. It would have been better for them to stay, learn the basics of Spanish, and make use of the charities present on the territory to initiate a lengthy but completely doable legal process to obtain asylum. Yet who are we to blame them; after crossing the largest desert on Earth, dodging scammers, pimps, and organ sellers, why would they trust us, when we can't make their dream happen at an acceptable speed?

According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child established in 1990, children are to be protected and supported regardless of their nationality and immigration status - which means that even if these children are accompanied by a legal guardian, they should be protected and have access to basic rights - which includes receiving an education within the first months of their arrival in a new country. Regardless of their immigration status - remember these words, because they will come in handy for the next topic. On top of this, unaccompanied minors have priority in the resettlement and family reunion schemes of the European Union. Sounds to too good to be true, right? In reality, bureaucracy is much slower and often focuses its efforts on trying to prove that the child is lying about their age. Although this is a legitimate notion to verify the truth, often attempts are repeated until they become unnecessary and, frankly, a joke; leaving children to deal with the profound psychological scars and delaying a much-needed family reunification process.

So why would they trust us? They are minors who have long forgotten the meaning of being a child, confronted with deep psychological scars from which they might never heal from. So if a guy on a boat promises a better life across the channel, his promise is as worthy of trust as one of the charities working to make the law happen. Doesn't matter if across the sea they will find more misery and less support, especially if by the time they've crossed they've lost their status as minors. I've seen this happen so many times in Belfast when I worked for the Refugee Support of the British Red Cross. Psychological consequences of destitution are obliterating, quite literally annihilating the individual - and despite all laws and protections we set up to protect these minors, we still remain unable to practically protect anyone from devastating experiences within our peaceful borders. Freedom for all, but conditions do apply.


More links:
UNICEF report
Risk of mental illness
Global Compact on Refugees
Separated Children In Numbers (EU)

Comments