Swedish aid workers try to find lone child refugees

{Sweden, which received most child refugees in 2015, tries to find some of Europe’s tens of thousands of missing kids.}

The EU’s criminal intelligence agency says more than 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees have disappeared since arriving in Europe in recent months.

It is feared many may have become victims of trafficking.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Sweden, says the country received the most child refugees in Europe in 2015.

After three days of trying to interview some of these children, our correspodent met with some lone refugee minors, who both social services and the police are looking for.

“More children seek asylum in Sweden than in any other country in the world but they too have seen new arrivals simply vanish from the system,” Jamjoom said. “By night police watch out for them. By day, social workers look out for them.”

Refused asylum

One 18-year-old Moroccan, whose identity Al Jazeera is protecting, thought life would get better when he arrived in Sweden two years ago as he was placed in a refugee camp.

“I was put in school and I learned a lot of Swedish in a pretty short time,” the teenager told Al Jazeera. “But then I was refused asylum, and it was just such a shock.”

The child said he appealed the decision twice, and was rejected both times. Fearing deportation, he ran away.

Petty crime was the only way, he said, that he could make ends meet.

“They’re [the authorities] are writing in the papers here that Moroccans are criminals. But Moroccan kids who have to resort to crime aren’t getting involved in it to hurt others, they’re doing it so they can survive,” said the young refugee.

Anders Ygeman, Sweden’s interior minister, told Al Jazeera that the country is careful when dealing with children, but did not rule out placing them in detention facilities.

“We don’t jail children because they’re children,” the official said. “We have the UN Charter of Children’s Rights where we have a certain responsibility as well.

“So we have to deal with different children with different resources and different ages in different ways.”

Avoiding social workers

Mikael Jeppson, head of the city of Stockholm’s Outreach Unit, said he understands why children avoid social workers.

“I can really understand that some of them try to avoid us, and when they don’t know what we want with them … but this is actually just a way for us to offer them support and keep them out in a way from risk environments.”

Elin Wernquist, meanwhile, works specifically with Moroccan street children in Stockholm.

She said Sweden has made it much harder for these children to get asylum, and that the risk is now higher for more to fall into the hands of gangs and traffickers.

“They end up in this sort of legal limbo where they have no future – they can’t make sense of life and why stay in a system that eventually will expel you? What is the point of that? So a lot of them actually choose to leave,” she told Al Jazeera.

Source: Al Jazeera:[Swedish aid workers try to find lone child refugees->http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/swedish-aid-workers-find-lone-child-refugees-160215162222174.html]