Records from last year show that 70 unaccompanied children from Albania applied for asylum in one of the member states of the European Union, a record-high figure when compared to other countries in the region.
20 applications were filed from Kosovo, 5 from North Macedonia, and none from the other countries in the Western Balkans, according to data from Eurostat.
In 2020, the number of unaccompanied Albanian children in the EU was 75, and 160 in 2019.
Belgium is the most sought-after country logging 25 application, followed by Sweden, Greece, and Germany which recorded 10 each.
Germany and France topped the list in 2019.
Edmond Bogdani, a former executive at a center in Lyon that accommodates unaccompanied children, said for Good Morning on Euronews Albania that a majority of those minors come from northern and northeastern Albania.
He said that children who arrive from the capital have a similar background, coming from poor families with a below-average level of education.
Bogdani says teens below the age of 16 experience detachment from their families the worst.
Among other things, he was taken aback by the fact that in most cases they were smokers, something uncommon among their contemporaries from 9 different ethnicities.
“We had two brothers coming, 15 and 13 years of age, who started crying on their second. It’s rarer to see girls, almost none. Even an underage girl that came to the center was continuously in touch with her brother, who came to pick her up from another nearby city”, recounted Bogdani.
Meanwhile, sociologist Eris Dhamo shared with Good Morning that in some cases it is families who train their children on how to apply for asylum.
She recounted a story when an Albanian family wanted to send their children to some relatives abroad, and instructed them to go to an asylum center and tell them that they are victims of domestic abuse, in order to be granted refugee status.
However, citing data from previous years, Bogdani believes things are improving.
“In 2012 there was a record high increase of these minors, not only from Albania but other nationalities, too. In 2012, France took charge of some 8,500 minors, a figure that reached 25,000 in 2017. Today, as we speak, the figure has hit 45,000”, he said.
Around 8,000 Albanians applied for asylum in France in 2018-2019, of which 2,100 were children, Bogdani said.
Ornela Hamati, the coordinator of a Swiss NGO operating in Albania called Terre Des Hommes Albania, notes that the tendency has been on the decline if we compare the data from 2016.
Citing data from research, Hamati said that the peak years were from 2016 to 2019.
“In 2016 figures exceeded 160 unaccompanied minors, meanwhile in 2020 there were 75”, Hamati says.
Children of the age group 14-17 mainly seek to leave due to social and economic issues.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
