News / Politics

Child refugees face sexual abuse in EU: British politician

Monday, 25 April 2016 10:55 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 25 April 2016 10:52 AM ]

A child carries blankets outside the old international airport in Athens, which is being used as a temporary camp for refugees, April 24, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

The leader of the Liberal Democrat political party in the United Kingdom says thousands of unaccompanied child refugees currently stranded in Europe face sexual abuse and that the UK should legally admit a portion of them in to protect them from such abuse.

Tim Farron made the remarks ahead of a vote at the UK’s House of Commons on whether to admit 3,000 unaccompanied minors into the UK on Monday night.

He said that about “30,000” unaccompanied children are now in Europe, adding that at least 10,000 of them have already disappeared and some of them have been subjected to sexual abuse.

“We reckon that 10,000 of those 30,000 have gone missing and they will be in the hands of traffickers, some of them sexually exploited,” he said.

Farron backed the proposal of taking the 3,000 lone minors, saying Britain must accept its “fair share.”

“[Home Secretary] Theresa May and [Prime Minister] David Cameron have the opportunity to help those children and prevent that trafficking [from] taking place,” he said.

A refugee child eats his dinner at a makeshift camp near the village of Idomeni on the Greek-Macedonian border, April 24, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Farron ruled out the possibility that the move by the UK would encourage families to send more children to the EU unaccompanied, arguing that just a quarter of the total number of refugees who flee conflict zones head to Europe and that the continent is not their sole destination.

The German news organization Funke Mediengruppe reported on April 11 that 5,835 refugee minors from countries in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia had gone missing in Germany in 2015, of whom 555 were under the age of 14 amid concerns that they might have fallen into the hands of criminals and human smugglers.

The majority of the missing and unaccompanied minors were from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Morocco and Algeria.

In February, the EU police agency Europol said more than 10,000 unaccompanied refugee children had gone missing after arriving in Europe over the previous 18-24 months.

Several members of the European Parliament said late last month that missing underage refugees might be victims of criminal organizations involved in the slave trade or organ trafficking.

Europe is facing an unprecedented influx of refugees.

Many blame major European powers for the unprecedented exodus of the refugees from their home countries, saying the policies of the European states have led to a surge in terrorism and war in those regions, forcing people to flee their home countries.

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