Next Steps for Refugee and Migrant Youth in Europe, Briefing of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, One Hundred Fifteenth Congress, Second Session, January 23, 2018

摘要

This is the January 23, 2018 briefing titled Next Steps for Refugee and Migrant Youth in Europe, given to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe [CSCE]. From the opening statement of Kathleen Newland: The refugee and migrant situation--and these are categories that are often very hard to separate with a bright line, has--the good news, I suppose, is that it has gone down quite substantially from the peak of the crisis in 2015. But it still remains high, with hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Europe, mostly by sea. As you may know, an agreement between the EU and Turkey to disrupt the smuggling routes from Turkey to the Greek islands was put in place in March of 2016, and resulted in quite a sharp drop in the eastern Mediterranean route, and proportionally an increase in the much more dangerous, longer, and abusive central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy. We're particularly concerned about youth in this briefing. And it's very hard to get an accurate assessment of the numbers. Certain categories of children are counted fairly reliably, particularly those that formally apply for asylum. And there were about 400,000 asylum applicants age 17 or younger in Europe in 2015 and 2016 alone. That was a huge increase over 2014. And the proportion of children, defined as those that are under 18, is--again, it's not a very reliable proportion, but it's assumed to be about somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. About 5 percent of those are unaccompanied children, who are obviously the most vulnerable. Statements, letters, and materials submitted for the record include those of the following: Mischa E. Thompson, Kathleen Newland, and Sofia Kouvelaki.