The number of missing unaccompanied minor asylum seekers in Europe has more than doubled

Never before have so many unaccompanied minor asylum seekers been registered as missing in Europe. Registered missing persons have more than doubled in the past three years. This is evident from an inventory by the international research platform Lost in Europe, which analyzed data from fifteen countries NRC shared. The vast majority of registered missing persons concern children from Afghanistan – the country where the Taliban regime retook power in the summer of 2021.

The exact number of missing persons cannot be determined because there is no central European registration and several countries do not have figures available. France, for example, does not register lost children, in other countries children are sometimes counted twice.

Lost in Europe requested data from a total of 31 European countries, but more than half did not respond or could not provide the requested data.

This concerns at least 50,000 registered missing persons, the research platform calculated. Each registration concerns a minor who applied for asylum alone while traveling through Europe and left a reception center ‘with an unknown destination’ between January 2021 and December 2023. That equates to around 47 missing persons per day, double compared to three years earlier. Between 2018 and 2020, the research platform still counted seventeen missing persons per day.

Human trafficking

Little is known about the fate of the disappeared children. Some travel on to family elsewhere in Europe, others prefer illegality to forced return to their home country. It is not uncommon for single children to become victims of human trafficking during their journey. This happened to unaccompanied minors from India, Nigeria and Vietnam, investigative journalists from Lost in Europe discovered. They were exploited and put to work in, among other things, cannabis cultivation, prostitution and nail salons, according to research by the police, migration organizations and the Expertise Center for Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking.

The National Rapporteur on Human Trafficking calls the doubling of the number of missing persons in Europe “very worrying”. European Commissioner Ylva Johansson, responsible for migration, points out that around 40,000 unaccompanied minors entered the European Union last year.

‘Broken system’

Johansson explains the high number of missing persons by “the broken migration system” and “an increase in secondary movements”. Asylum seekers, Johansson explains, are registered in one Member State and “disappear, or leave with the help of people smugglers to a second, sometimes third Member State.” But the new EU migration pact will change that, she expects. “Two weeks ago, the European Parliament agreed to new registration agreements. This should lead to better protection of unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.”

In the Netherlands, this concerns 850 missing persons out of a total of 15,404 registered unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.

In the past three years, the Netherlands counted 850 missing persons out of a total of 15,404 registered unaccompanied minor asylum seekers. Assuming that each missing person concerns a unique child, one in eighteen unaccompanied children who asked for asylum in the Netherlands disappeared. Most leave within six months for an unknown destination, often from Ter Apel registration center. After arrival, they must report to the immigration authorities, after which they are distributed to asylum seeker centers. After a missing person, COA always reports the matter to the police.

Exploratory research OVV

The Dutch Safety Board (OVV) will conduct an “exploratory” investigation into the safety of children in the Dutch asylum chain, a spokesperson responds. The council has been concerned for some time about the living conditions of underage asylum seekers and their safety in reception locations. The Ombudsman for Children, the Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate and the Justice and Security Inspectorate raised the alarm about this last year.

The inspections pointed to “substandard and unsafe living conditions in asylum reception facilities, especially for vulnerable children.” For example, the well-being and physical and emotional safety of young people are at stake, they are not assigned a youth protector in time and they have to wait a long time for a medical ‘intake’. In Ter Apel, the Ombudsman for Children noted “serious violations of children’s rights” in 2022.

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OVV will investigate the safety of children in the asylum chain

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