The months-long investigation was produced by media in Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
An investigation into the disappearance of greater than 50,000 migrant kids has gained the European Parliament’s 2024 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism.
Led by Dutch journalist Geesje van Haren, the Lost in Europe The venture discovered that since 2021, on common, virtually 47 migrant kids arriving in Europe have gone lacking daily.
Van Haren informed Euronews that many of those lacking kids are victims of human trafficking or discover themselves caught up within the EU crackdown on human trafficking gangs.
“Many kids are additionally caught on the borders and find yourself in jail for human trafficking whereas they themselves have been being smuggled. So the EU’s struggle in opposition to human trafficking works within the reverse manner for minor kids. Many minor kids are aged grownup detention because of this,” Van Haren defined.
“We know that our policing system and the system are failing to guard these kids. And we additionally know that there’s a lot of strain on the police groups who’ve to research this downside. But there’s additionally numerous strain on the police who should examine medicine, And more often than not human trafficking can also be associated to the work of drug personnel,” he added.
Documentation errors
The analysis additionally uncovered vital inconsistencies in documentation and reporting in 31 international locations, together with Austria, Germany and Italy, elevating considerations that the precise variety of lacking kids could also be increased.
The newest findings are based mostly on analysis carried out throughout an preliminary investigation in 2021, which revealed that greater than 18,000 migrant kids went lacking in Europe between 2018 and 2020.
“We talked to NGOs and business consultants. They say that is simply the tip of the iceberg, that 51,433 kids have been lacking. The final time we carried out this investigation, solely 18,000 kids have been lacking in 2021,” Geesje mentioned. van Haren to Euronews.
He provides that the crew additionally had problem accessing knowledge from some international locations, with France providing no response and Spain saying they didn’t distinguish between adults and minors of their knowledge.
However, van Haren hopes that the EU’s new pact on migration and asylum will make knowledge assortment extra rigorous, which might reveal much more lacking kids sooner or later.
Lost in Europe started investigating tales of lacking or “misplaced” migrant kids following a remark made by a former Europol chief of workers in 2016, who mentioned that on the time greater than 10,000 migrant kids had gone lacking in Europe.
The Lost in Europe crew plans to launch a brand new investigation in three years.
