Applications for asylum from unaccompanied minors across the whole of the European Union have more or less fallen steadily from a peak of more than 88,000 in 2015.
The UN children’s fund has urged governments to prioritise the safety of migrant children after the latest shipwrecks left at least 27 people, including women and children, dead.
Two boats sank in waters off eastern Tunisia on Thursday, a popular departure point for irregular migrants hoping to make it to Europe.
And among the seven survivors of a New Year’s Eve wreck off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa was an eight-year-old girl whose mother remains missing, UNICEF said.
The agency also said that last month, an 11-year-old girl found floating off Lampedusa was believed to be the only survivor of a migrant boat that had left the Tunisian city of Sfax carrying around 45 people.
According to the International Organization of Migration’s missing migrant tracker, 2,275 people were unaccounted for in the Mediterranean in 2024, bringing the total number of people missing since 2014 to 31,180.
The vast majority of those are believed to have died on the perilous central Mediterranean route, which is most often used by people smugglers from Libya and Tunisia to ferry desperate people towards Italy.
UNICEF called on governments to honour their obligations under international law regarding refugees and to prioritise the safeguarding of children.
“This includes ensuring safe, legal pathways for protection and family reunification, as well as coordinated search and rescue operations, safe disembarkation, community-based reception, and access to asylum services,” the agency said in a statement.
“We also urge increased investment in essential services for children and families arriving via dangerous migration routes, including psychosocial support, legal aid, health care, and education.”
Under Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, Italy has tried to stem arrivals by cracking down on migrant smuggling operations and deterring would-be refugees with the threat of having their asylum claims processed in Albania.
According to the European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, in 2023 more 2,200 people ‘considered to be unaccompanied minors’ filed asylum applications with Italian authorities. For Greece in the same year that figure was over 2,600, while Spain handled just 30 such applications.
Applications for asylum from unaccompanied minors across the whole of the European Union have more or less fallen steadily from a peak of more than 88,000 in 2015.
Meanwhile, the Spanish migration rights group Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said in December than 10,000 migrants died last year attempting to reach Spain by sea.
