IRIN Web Special on Separated Somali Children

A Gap in their Hearts: the experience of separated Somali children

This report is about Somali children whose parents are faced with desperate choices. It looks at how that despair has been turned into a lucrative and exploitative international child-smuggling business, which delivers the agonies of a failed state to the doorstep of the West. IRIN sheds light for the first time on why parents pay smugglers up to US $10,000 to abandon their young children in airports and railway stations in foreign lands, and what happens to these "separated" or "unaccompanied" children if they are later sent home by the Somali diaspora.

Child migrants and their unhappy fate is but one small part of the greater immigration debate. Immigration is one of the most important issues in the West today, attracting much public and political concern. According to recent studies, there may be up to 100,000 separated or unaccompanied children from more than 60 countries living in Western Europe at any one time; but very little is known about them. There have recently been a number of high profile cases that have tragically illustrated migrant children's special vulnerability - for example, the case of Victoria Climbié, a nine year old girl from the Ivory Coast who was sent to the UK for educational opportunities, but abused and murdered by her aunt and the aunt's partner. Other cases involve the bodies of children found in the undercarriage of airplanes, like the two young stowaways from Ghana found dead at Heathrow on 5 December 2002; and 87 refugee children who went "missing" in Sweden in 2001.

Somali children are consistently one of the largest groups of separated children arriving in European and North American countries since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991. Up to 250 children a month are sent out of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, smugglers and humanitarian agents told IRIN - although international security measures after the events of 11 September stemmed the flow and increased the cost. Even in post-conflict Somali areas, families continue to send children away because of poor services - particularly education. But, once abroad, Somalis count as one of the least "visible" groups of unaccompanied children, as they are almost without exception claimed by clan and extended family soon after arrival, often circumventing the official registers and support services.

While some unaccompanied children may end up in the competent care of relatives, all are an unwitting part of an international racket. They arrive burdened with a false identity - a new name, a different age, an imaginary history - which they have been coached and threatened to maintain. In one way or another, they are considered a kind of investment by parents who see no future in their own country. Many are used for benefit fraud. In the more extreme cases, some are also used as domestic labour, or for prostitution, or fall into the hands of international criminal gangs. All too frequently, the struggle with serious psychological problems and neglect ends up in criminalisation or institutional care. "Often the family just wants social service benefits, and does not give the child any affection or proper attention… I have heard of suicide cases, where these young Somali children attempt to kill themselves," Dahabo Isa of a British NGO the Somali Development Organisation told IRIN.

The arrival of a child without its parents or guardians poses unique challenges to the host country, raising serious questions about the rights and mental health of that child. IRIN looked at both sides of the story - the conditions in Somali territories as well as in the host countries - based primarily on interviews with the children and their parents, and a broader circle of professionals and officials. In the course of the research, success stories were hard to find. Even separated children who had ultimately excelled in the education system were unanimous in their "don't do it" message, citing psychological distress and cultural confusion. Ilan, who arrived in Sweden as an unaccompanied child, told IRIN that out of an original group of 15, she was one of only two to make it through the education system: "Some got pregnant, some became alcoholics, some are on drugs, and some ended up in juvenile centers."

Those who "fail" may ultimately be sent home by the Somali diaspora. They are known as "family deportees" in Mogadishu, where thousands of returned teenagers are languishing in a sort of cultural no-man's-land. Conspicuous in the way they talk, dress and behave, these returnee minors face daily bullying and isolation. At worse, they meet with extortion, rape and murder in the hands of child-gangs - a consequence of some of the terrible conditions their peers have suffered in the homeland. A shocking glimpse in the report at the situation of children in Somali territories - including abused children in adult prisons - shows why so many parents are prepared to take the risk with the smugglers. "You can see why, for some, sending a child away on a plane is considered the biggest favour you can do", says UN Human Rights Officer, Fatuma Ibrahim.

After a decade of international neglect, Somalia's unique circumstances mean it is a country that continues to produce a significant number of unaccompanied children. A Gap in their Hearts: the experience of separated Somali children hopes to show that development and aid is imperative, particularly in the field of education, rather than relying on erecting more barriers in the receiving countries. The report hopes to act as a reminder that Somalia remains an international responsibility, and that continued neglect comes with a price for everyone.

Separated children

Save the Children and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) define separated or unaccompanied children as "children under 18 years of age who are outside their country of origin and separated from both parents, or their previous legal/customary primary caregiver. Some children are totally alone while others…may be living with extended family members." According to the Statement of Good Practice for Separated Children in Europe, issued by these agencies in October 2000, the word "separated" is preferred, as it "better defines the essential problem that such children face [being] without the care and protection of their parents or legal guardian and as a consequence suffer socially and psychologically from this separation."

The migration of separated children is by no means a new phenomenon. In the late 1930s and 1940s the UK received many unaccompanied Jewish children, and in the 1970s Vietnamese "boat" children began arriving in Europe. The most recent influx of separated children are Iraqi Kurds and Afghans, where previously in the 1990s children from Somalia and the former Yugoslavia were among the most numerous. However, official figures are based only on those children who register an asylum claim; humanitarian agencies and human rights groups believe there are many more who pass undetected over the borders and through the ports of entry, often from one destination to another, or into the hands of criminal cartels.

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