{"id":297772,"date":"2017-02-28T07:26:03","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T07:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=297772"},"modified":"2017-02-28T07:26:03","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T07:26:03","slug":"libya-exposed-as-child-migrant-abuse-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/02\/libya-exposed-as-child-migrant-abuse-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"Libya exposed as child migrant abuse hub"},"content":{"rendered":"
The United Nations has warned that large numbers of children are still risking their lives to make the dangerous journey from Libya to Italy.<\/p>\n
Unicef says almost 26,000 children – most of them unaccompanied – crossed the Mediterranean last year.<\/p>\n
In its new report, Unicef says many children suffer from violence and sexual abuse at the hands of smugglers and traffickers.<\/p>\n
But they rarely report their abuse, for fear of arrest and deportation.<\/p>\n
The agency also says there is a lack of food, water and medical care in Libya’s detention centres.<\/p>\n
The plight of children, many of them unaccompanied by parents, has become a tragically familiar part of the wider story of mass migration over the past two years.<\/p>\n
But while much has been said about the extreme dangers faced at sea, the privations experienced on land, especially in Libya, are less familiar.<\/p>\n
Unicef’s latest report, A Deadly Journey for Children, documents – in sometimes horrific detail – stories of slavery, violence and sexual abuse experienced by huge numbers of vulnerable children making their perilous way to Italy.<\/p>\n
“What really shocked Unicef staff and me… is what happens to them [children] on this route,” says Justin Forsyth, the organisation’s deputy executive director. “Many of these children have been brutalised, raped, killed on this route.”<\/p>\n
Girls such as nine-year-old Kamis, who set off with her mother from their home in Nigeria. After a desert crossing in which a man died, followed by a dramatic rescue at sea, they found themselves held at a detention centre in the Libyan town of Sabratha.<\/p>\n
“They used to beat us every day,” Kamis told the researchers. “There was no water there either. That place was very sad. There’s nothing there.”<\/p>\n
Much of the violence is gratuitous, and much of it is sexual.<\/p>\n
“Nearly half the women and children interviewed had experienced sexual abuse during migration,” the report says. “Often multiple times and in multiple locations.”<\/p>\n
Borders, it seems, are particularly dangerous.<\/p>\n
“Sexual violence was widespread and systemic at crossings and checkpoints,” says the report.<\/p>\n
Many of the assailants are in uniform. This is said to be just one reason why those who suffer abuse are reluctant to report their experiences.<\/p>\n
And Libya, as the funnel through which so many journeys pass, has earned itself a shocking reputation as the epicentre of abuse.<\/p>\n
“Approximately one third [of those interviewed] indicated they had been abused in Libya,” the report says. “A large majority of these children did not answer when asked who had abused them.”<\/p>\n