Investigation into the Disappearance of Child Migrants Wins Prestigious Award
An extensive investigation into the alarming disappearance of over 50,000 child migrants has been awarded the European Parliament’s 2024 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism. This vital project, known as Lost in Europe, was spearheaded by Dutch journalist Geesje van Haren.
Since 2021, the project has revealed a staggering average of nearly 47 migrant children missing each day upon their arrival in Europe. Van Haren shared her insights with Euronews, emphasizing that many of these vulnerable children fall prey to the horrors of human trafficking or become entangled in the EU’s stringent measures aimed at curbing people smuggling.
“Many children are caught at the borders and end up in detention for people smuggling, despite being victims themselves,” Van Haren explained. “The EU’s vigorous campaign against people smuggling often inadvertently places minor children in adult detention facilities, exacerbating their already precarious situation.”
She further elaborated, “Our policing and protective systems are failing these children significantly. We know that police forces are under immense pressure to tackle various crimes, including drug trafficking, which often overlaps with human trafficking cases. Unfortunately, this leads to a neglect of the urgent need to protect vulnerable minors.”
Documentation Failures
The investigation has also revealed troubling inconsistencies in the documentation and reporting processes across 31 countries, including Austria, Germany, and Italy. This raises serious concerns that the actual number of missing children could be far greater than reported. The latest findings build on earlier research conducted in 2021, which disclosed that over 18,000 migrant children had gone missing in Europe between 2018 and 2020.
- “We spoke with various NGOs and experts working in the field, and they assert that this is merely the tip of the iceberg. The number of missing children has escalated to 51,433,” Geesje van Haren stated in her interview with Euronews.
- She noted that the investigative team faced substantial challenges in accessing data from several countries. For instance, France did not respond at all, while Spain indicated that they do not differentiate between adults and minors in their statistics.
Despite these obstacles, van Haren expressed optimism that the new EU pact on migration and asylum would enforce stricter data collection protocols, potentially uncovering even more cases of missing children in the future.
The initiative, Lost in Europe, was launched in response to a striking comment made by a former Europol chief of staff in 2016, who noted that over 10,000 migrant minors had gone missing across Europe. This shocking statistic ignited a commitment to investigate the stories of these missing or ‘lost’ children.
Looking ahead, the Lost in Europe team plans to embark on a new investigative journey in three years, aiming to shed light on the ongoing plight of migrant children in Europe.
