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IRIN Web Special on Separated Somali Children
Chapter 1: Unaccompanied Somali children: the push factor
"She will miss her parents because she is young, but it cannot be avoided - there is no education here" - Arriving in the children's house, Carlslund Refugee Centre, Sweden.
Photo: IRIN/Jenny Matthews-Network
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Introduction
Children are sent out of Somali territories because of a chronic social emergency after a decade of destruction and international neglect. Many of the separated Somali children arriving in Europe are coming from areas affected by insecurity or actual conflict in southern Somalia and Mogadishu, but children are also sent from the more peaceful post-conflict areas.
Loss of livelihood, continued conflict, and the absence of basic services - particularly education and health - has meant there is a general lack of faith in the future. Sending teenagers and young children abroad has become a widespread economic strategy, in the hope that the child will eventually be in the position to regularly send money home.
[Background 15]
Extreme conditions, desperate solutions
According to Amina Haji Elmi, founder and director of the Institute for the Education and Development of Women in Mogadishu, Somalis will go to extremes to try and send their children abroad. "Parents are selling their houses and moving in with relatives to send their children…I think it's a combination of fear and lack of educational opportunities." Where there are six or more children, the parents try to send at least two, generally the older ones, Amina told IRIN. "Everything has collapsed here: they say, how can I keep my children here?" She believes the only way to stop the practice is to have "schools, hospitals, disarmament, peace, a government and more".
Others emphasise the economic strategy. "The point is that the child, once sent abroad, becomes a source of income," Abdirashid Haji Nur of Concern, Mogadishu, told IRIN. For many, it is the income a child will provide once on welfare in the host country that appears to determine the decision to send them abroad rather than quality of education.
One Somali humanitarian worker in Hargeysa, the capital of Somaliland, described the desire to get a visa as a national obsession. "Each person here would sell their soul to get a visa - they would sell their house, their camels, their possessions, their gold. They are happy to pay up to US $10,000 to an agent and take a gamble to get someone abroad." Although Somaliland is relatively secure and peaceful, residents say the absence of decent education facilities, and hospitals, and a poor, limited economy still encourage families to send children overseas.
In Mogadishu, many parents who have sent children abroad said they planned to join them once their youngest children were safely out of Somalia. However, over time, the children and the parents become culturally estranged. Parents and the extended family have to reconcile themselves to the fact that their children will shed much of their cultural identity, abandon their language and become lax in the practice of their Islamic religion. One mother, Fatum Muhammad Ali, 43, said when she eventually saw her oldest son again, he barely stayed two weeks in Mogadishu. "He came and asked to leave immediately," she told IRIN - but said she did not regret sending him away, despite being hurt by his behaviour. "I suppose it would be sad if these were different circumstances, but as it is, we have bigger problems - our main problem is the war."
Those interviewed in Mogadishu pointed out that many of the families who sent children overseas were wealthy enough to afford to protect their children, either by keeping them safe in their guarded compounds or providing them with armed escorts. But as such an existence is stressful and expensive, many prefer to find a way to get the children into a productive and secure environment overseas that will benefit both the child and the family. These families can afford to pay for education in Mogadishu's private schools or hire individual tutors, but prefer to accumulate a much larger sum of money to smuggle them abroad. "My children are my assets", one woman who had sent four children to Sweden and UK stated bluntly.
[Relative in Hargeysa, on decision to send 14-year-old girl overseas alone 17]
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