The boys who dreamt of Britain

originally published:
31st October 2009

The last asylum camp in Calais closed five weeks ago. Jerome Taylor discovers that children are among the unfortunates left at the mercy of people-traffickers.

Dozens of children – sent from Afghanistan by their parents in the hope of finding a better life in Britain – are sleeping rough on the streets of Calais following the demolition of the town’s last remaining asylum camp, an investigation by The Independent has found. In a two-day visit to the Pas-de-Calais region, at least 30 children between the ages of 10 and 16 were identified sleeping under canal bridges and in the forests surrounding the town.

The boys are reliant on the people-traffickers who plan to stow them away on to trucks into Britain. Most of the children were sent abroad by parents who paid tens of thousands of dollars to trafficking cartels who falsely assured them that their children would be safe in Europe.

Aid agencies say the French authorities are aware of their presence but no attempt has been made to take them into care. Under Article 20 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which France ratified in 1990, countries are obliged to provide “special protection and assistance” to any children who have been deprived of their family.

Instead, charity workers and migrants say riot police have resorted to increasingly brutal tactics to ensure that the refugees do not build any new permanent settlements in a bid to discourage new arrivals.

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Posted by Tippa Naphtali on 03/11/2009. Filed under Human Rights,Refugees & Asylum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry