A recent report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleges that migrant children from Africa face squalid conditions and beatings from staff at emergency centers in the Canary Islands. The centers were opened just one year ago to care for the more than 900 unaccompanied migrant children who arrive in the Canary Islands each year. These children are mostly boys, ages 10 to 17, arriving from Senegal and Morocco.
As the closest European landmass to Africa, the Canary Islands are frequently the target of African migrants looking to work illegally in Europe. Last year alone, some 30,000 migrants arrived illegally in the Canary Islands via makeshift rafts and fishing boats.
Generally, when migrants arrive in the Canary Islands they are received by the Red Cross and then transferred to temporary holding centers. From the holding centers, migrants are either sent back to Africa or flown to mainland Spain. However, these children are being held indefinitely in overcrowded, prison-like facilities where they have no access to public education, are given little food, and have limited time for recreation.
HRW alleges that these conditions are contrary to Spain’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by Spain in 1990. Under the convention, the government should find a solution as soon as possible for the children and allow them to apply for asylum. In contrast, HRW’s report reveals numerous accounts of ill-treatment and failure of the staff to protect the children from violence amongst the children.
The HRW report, entitled “Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain’s Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands,” was based on 75 interviews from children at 11 residential centers across five islands. Among the accounts of ill-treatment, the children described a “punishment cell” in which they were sometimes beaten and locked up for days. The cell is a grimy, windowless room where children are forced to urinate and defecate for lack of permission to use the toilets.
Other children told stories of beatings in the showers by staff and even cases of sexual harassment.
While HRW has called for the immediate closure of all emergency centers, Spanish and regional authorities have refuted the report’s findings. The regional Canary Islands government released a statement that it had conducted a two-month internal investigation of the centers that failed to produce any evidence of abuse. However, it does concede that the emergency centers are not the best solution for the children. It blames the centers' failure on both lack of funding from the Spanish government and failure to relocate the children to the mainland as promised by the Spanish government.
If the allegations against Spain prove to be true, it could tarnish what up until now has been a relatively positive reputation in Spain for managing widespread illegal migration to the Canary Islands.
For more information see:
African Migrant Children Beaten, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6917039.stm, 26 July 2007.
Human Rights Watch Says Migrant Children Are At Risk in Canary Islands, International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/26/asia/abuse.php, 26 July 2007.
Spain: Migrant Children at Risk in Government Facilities, Human Rights Watch, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/07/26/spain16449.htm, 26 July 2007.
Child Migrants Face Abuse, News Feed Researcher, http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_w30/idw2007.07.27.13.51.07.html, 27 July 2007.
Child Migrants Face Abuse in Spanish Centres-HRW, Reuters, http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL26757124.html, 26 July 2007.




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