868 children arrived in Malta last year after being rescued at sea. They included 768 who were unaccompanied or separated from their parents (UASC), according to a report by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNICEF and the International Organisations for Migration.
Most originated from Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea.
A similar report for 2018 did not include Malta in its data, but the Malta Ministry of Home Affairs had said that 104 unaccompanied migrants under the age of 18 arrived in Malta in that year.
In all, 33,200 children arrived in Greece, Spain, Italy, Malta, Bulgaria and Cyprus between January and December 2019, of whom 38% were girls.
In their assessment of Malta, the organisations reported that all children are subject to limitations to their freedom of movement upon arrival at the Initial Reception Centre and the Safi detention centre for an initial period of several weeks to months, while health checks take place before the children can be transferred to open centres.
Delays in transfer to open centres occur mostly as a result of lack of reception space in open centres/centres devoted to unaccompanied children.
In December 2019, only around 50 children were residing in an open centre dedicated specifically to unaccompanied children where their freedom of movement was not subject to constraints.
Capacity pressures
Some 186, or 24% of all unaccompanied children who arrived in Malta by sea in 2019, remained in the Safi detention facility in December 2019, while another 82, or 11% of unaccompanied children who arrived in 2019 were accommodated in the Initial Reception Centre, a reception facility where health checks, age and vulnerability assessments normally take place.
Due to the increase in the number of unaccompanied children arriving by sea, those assessed as being between 16 and 18 years old also started being accommodated in an open centre for adults, which hosts over 1,000 persons. A ‘buffer zone’ to separate the children from adults was created in this open centre in late 2019, but the separation was possible only to a limited extent, with children still sharing common facilities with adults and insufficient physical barriers to isolate the children’s area, the organisations said.
“Open centres require enhanced reception facilities for unaccompanied children – both in terms of support provided and space to ensure that children are separated from adults and protected as needed,” the assessment said.
The report also shows after the official closure of the EU emergency relocation scheme in 2018, IOM continued to support national authorities to relocate migrants and refugees arriving by sea to other EU Member States through bilateral agreements. Between January and December 2019, a total of 23 unaccompanied children were relocated from Malta to Germany (12), Finland (5), Ireland (4) and Slovenia (2).