Guest post: "These are the lost children of Europe"

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At last count, 423 unaccompanied children were living in the Jungle camp in Calais.

I have spoken with a number of them on my trips in recent months. Many had reached the camp by themselves; they had been orphaned, separated en route, or sent away by their parents who had paid traffickers. Some I talked to were as young as ten.

These are some of the lost children of Europe; officially, they don't exist.
On Friday, the French government's plan to clear part of the Jungle was approved by the courts. While authorities say around 1000 people will be affected, aid agencies put the figure far higher.

Volunteers in the makeshift women and children's centre in the camp do their best to look after the unaccompanied minors, but there are no NGOs working with them. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has not contacted the centre and neither have government officials.

Conditions in the camp are harsh. I cannot imagine my teen living there. It is cold and wet; the only thing keeping people fed and clothed adequately is the huge volunteer effort. I saw little children playing in waste pits contaminated with industrial waste and human excrement. Sickness spreads quickly through the camp - a measles outbreak was only just averted because Médecins Sans Frontières moved swiftly to run a vaccination programme.

There are frequently clashes between the CRS riot police and a small number of frustrated migrants. They throw stones; the CRS retaliate with tear gas and rubber bullets fired far into the camp. The tear gas floats amongst the family tents, choking the sleeping inhabitants at night. In the Calais Jungle, it seems that human rights do not apply. However, the camp does offer a degree of protection that will now disappear as a result of the eviction order issued to the southern half of the camp. The fear is that they will disperse into many smaller camps across northern France.

I thought Calais was terrible. Then I went to Dunkirk. The camp at Grand Synthe is a living hell. Around 2500 people live there, including many families with young children and small babies. No structures are allowed; tents and wooden pallets have to be snuck in. The mud is indescribable, thick and Somme-like. Inside the tents we saw children sleeping on pallets slowly sinking into the swamp.

In Dunkirk, I helped in a little school for the afternoon. It sees around 30-40 children each week. It consists of an army-type tent, open at the ends, and a floor made of pallets that float on top of the mud. Everything is covered with a layer of dirt. Paper gets damp too quickly and it is impossible to look after resources there, so the small number of amazing teachers who run it - I met British and French people - have to rely on their ingenuity and resilience. The children were wonderful; I was helping six year olds learn their numbers. In all of that mud, damp and cold, wrapped up in coats, chests rattling from infections, they still smiled and laughed and tried to teach me Kurdish.

There is some hope for the Dunkirk children. A new camp is being built by Médecins Sans Frontières. For those who are able to move to it, the conditions will be much better. The Brighton Build shelter project, Hummingbird project and Brighton Bridge are working together to create a new school and family centre in the camp, which you can support here.

This is the humanitarian side of this crisis, which must be acknowledged. I am not looking at politics, I am looking at people – and they need our help.

Guest blogger - there's an EU wide principle of asylum seekers applying in the first safe country they reach, and being possibly sent back to the first country of contact if needed. Why then would the UK have an asylum application centre in France - unless they've now designated France as unsafe. Perhaps asylum seekers have said it is so, though I can't think why.

Buds, yes I do agree. And I think it is very sad for children to be stuck in muddy camps without even basic facilities, never mind space to play or learn...
But the aid workers in the camps have the ability to help these children - they speak the language of the country (or can access translators), and many would have money to hire legal help. If French authorities won't enter the camp, they could liase with them for asylum seekers. It boggles my mind that they think the acceptable answer is creating some sort of slum city where these people can waste months or years.

Oh no thats awful, tear gas.

Why on earth did they use tear gas?

January that's appalling and shameful.

It boggles my mind that they think the acceptable answer is creating some sort of slum city where these people can waste months or years

^ and encourage them to stay in it and wait!

It would be more powerful and informative to post the steps one took to get support and asylum for the children, you know.

Then seeing how the volunteer battled to get the children their legal rights in France we could really see how France was letting them down. Then outsiders would have something to get their teeth into, into terms of complaining.

sorry that post went mad but there is a link I have posted with a normal document listing the steps for children to take, and what to do if thwarted.

Thank you for writing this.
I agree entirely with this:

'Calais is not a good solution, it is a pretty grim one. I would be happy to see it dismantled were proper solutions in place: the children looked after properly by the French, A UK asylum centre in Calais so that people for who wish to apply to the UK could be properly processed and then if they don't get accepted they can move on and make a new life for themselves.

Calais is better than what is happening now - people fleeing across the countryside, some to Dunkirk, others just scattering into little groups where they will no longer have any support at all - no legal advice, no community, no access to food.'

I agree with others on this thread- where are social services? Why does child protection not count for these children? (I agree with them about little else),

For years this camp has existed, and I have seen no evidence of child protection.

I have also volunteered twice in Calais and the conditions are horrendous. Thank you for publicising the appalling lack of humanity here. I understood that unaccompanied children were not allowed in the "shipping containers" without an adult FAMILY member? How can the blatant bulldozing today of the refugee's homes and scant possessions/documents without warning and with nowhere to go be unacceptable 22 miles from the UK? I do not have a political solution but I do know that if we had been born in Syria and our homes and lives had been destroyed through no fault of our own - then I would hope and pray for more humanity from my fellow human beings??

They're only in Calais refusing a move to the container camp for one reason and that is to get to the UK, there is nothing wrong with living in France if you are fleeing a war zone.

Just now on news at 10 one migrant in the Calais camp said unequivocally that the move to the new camp required a palm print which could be used to force them to accept asylum in France.

I just want to be clear on a detail that has been mentioned several times. Why are the refugees or migrants unwilling to be fingerprinted? Isn't that mandatory ?

"I do know that if we had been born in Syria and our homes and lives had been destroyed through no fault of our own - then I would hope and pray for more humanity from my fellow human beings??"

Give it a rest, redwineaje. Some of these migrants have mangled their fingerprints, dont want to apply for asylum in France and give no good reason. They could have started their applications months ago and now would be near to getting their legal papers to live in EU.

Those with children look as if they are deliberately putting their kids thru it as emotional blackmail. It's a battle of wills. No one thus far has given a good reason why the adults they refuse to apply for asylum in France. That suggests they are not refugees, are not eligible but believe that UK is a soft touch and will let them in anyway.

Not to mention the fact not that many of them are actually from Syria.

Also, surely it is logical that the unaccompanied minors should go into foster care and not alone to the containers? I would have thought it normal that children go with their families, those without need to be taken care of by social services.

Finally, "22 miles from the UK" in another European, democratic, 1st world sovereign state.

thank you OP for sharing

I'm quite interested in how these unaccompanied children come to be in the camp... (I understand the 6 yos in Dunkirk were actually with their families.)
You said you spoke to one (in Calais) as young as 10 - what would you say the average age was - are them more in the 10-13 or 13-15 or 15-18 age group? What about gender split - mainly boys I would assume?
When you said for some of them their parents had paid traffickers to send them...why? Is it so they can claim asylum in the UK then bring their family over?
What are the countries of origin of these children?
Are they really refugees or economic migrants? If they have ties with the UK, why don't they claim asylum in France and then apply to move to the UK (which I believe can be done)?
Do some come from similar backgrounds as the Moroccan street children living in Stockholm station (the ones who terrorise the public and refuse to stay in the care homes)?

The containers are being taken up on a first come first served basis.
Women and children are not being prioritised for places in the containers.
The unaccompanied children do not want to go into the containers as they are basic dormitories with 12 people per container. There is no personal storage space and 11 other people can come and go in and out of your living space whenever they want. The wooden shelters built by volunteers on the same land offered privacy and could be locked.

Two days ago the French authorities drove buses to the camp and some of the children were told that the buses would take them to the UK, which was not true - the UK border agency would never allow this. About 15 of the unaccompanied children decided to board the buses and as they did, UK volunteers who knew the children gave them slips of paper with their phone numbers on in case of emergency.

The French authorities made the children hand over the slips of paper.
This roused the suspicions of the children and they all decided to get off the bus.

In answer to BudsBeginingSpringinSight, that's correct. France does not take asylum claims from unaccompanied children.
After much campaigning the UK border agency agreed to open an office which would be accessible to residents of the Jungle camp. This is scheduled for about ten days time.

By then it may be too late for many of these people, the children being the most vulnerable of all.

Children are do not have the emotional capacity to make such large decisions about their future, this is why we loving adults choose to serve water, not coke, broccoli (uneaten) and why during difficult break-ups a judge will rarely ask a child what they "want".

We as adults take control and look after children.

We don't walk past a crying child in tesco, never mind in the midst if violent predators (I shall call them that as allegedly there is no container space for children as the men took it).

I'm delighted someone posted the French legal rights of unaccompanied minors and although my French is shaky I would be happy to google the numbers of local social services all the way to the Belgian border and across to Lille. I would also be happy to top up your phone credit by a few euros so you can actually do something.

It is nonsensical and illogical to suggest that these children are at Calais by pure chance and because they have family in the UK. Someone has told them to go there.

Should these children go to social services today they will be safe tonight, they will receive French documentation (one day) and be at liberty to travel to the UK to rejoin family. Failing that, from the safety of France "mama, I'm safe, I'm in France, can you apply for me to come?".

How can you leave children here? Why did "aid workers" give out personal phone numbers rather than the number of social services?

It makes my blood run cold to think that these so-called charity workers can abandon children in need for political point-scoring. I couldn't live with myself. But then I scoop up and cuddle a fallen toddler and help them find their mummy.

I don't understand why they can choose not to register and have their fingerprints taken. They are in France illegally so surely if they do not register and give their fingerprints voluntarily, they should be arrested and made to do so. And it should not be beyond the wit of the French authorities to rescue the children and rehouse them in foster homes or centres.

AgainstTheGlock many of the unaccompanied children in the camp were travelling with family members when they became separated from them during the arduous journey from their destroyed homes.

Others have fled after seeing their families murdered in front of them and have joined a group heading for what they perceive as safety.

They have arrived in the Jungle camp not knowing what country they were in but finding others from their country who speak their language and share their experience and culture. Efforts to separate them from this tenuous security and place them across France in care hostels have failed because the children wanted to be with their own (displaced) community.

Words fail me. How on earth can this guest blogger (and others) play the "pity the poor children" card, teach them some English numbers and then leave them in the hellhole of the illegal camp?

Why is MN publishing this anonymous guest blogger? I mean, I know MNHQ are raving lefties, but this is beyond the pale.

MN should be shouting from the rooftops how these children have obviously been lied to, brainwashed, and god knows what else to be in this position.

And they are the ones who lived to tell the tale.

I'll try and answer as many questions as I can before I start work.

Do people not think that volunteers would much rather see these children in safe places? There are many lawyers involved in these cases and volunteers have been working hard to identify them - yet still the social services have not taken them in. I don't understand this, there are many things I don't understand about Calais.

You can't imagine how helpless I feel having to leave the children there - but what can I do? I can't take them with me - I would be arrested for people smuggling. People with legal knowledge are trying every avenue they can. In the mean time, while the process slowly grinds on, these children still need education, food, shelter.

Parents send children via people traffickers because they genuinely believe the children will be safer in Europe, than back in Syria or Afghanistan. I can't imagine the torment that they must undergo before they make this decision. Before all of this happened, they once had homes, jobs, went to school had normal every day lives. They were ordinary people.

The fingerprinting means they can't claim asylum in another country. I can't force them to do this - I'm just one person, with an ordinary job. All I can do is help on a humanitarian level.

I would like to repeat there are very few container places left now. figures as of last week Since last week many people have moved to fill the remaining places, it is estimated there were 130 places left at the weekend in the containers but I do not have an official source for that figure.

The containers are being taken up on a first come first served basis. Women and children are not being prioritised for places in the containers. Why not? What happened to the almost-universally accepted principle of 'women and children ' (aka, the most vulnerable) first? I would expect aid workers to do their utmost to ensure that spaces were given to the most vulnerable members of societies. Who has taken these spaces so that vulnerable chidren don't have access to them?

Against - I speak fluent French so can call them right now. What would you like me to say? That there are children in the Calais refugee camp? You think they don't know that?

On a related note: Have you ever had any sort of interaction with a French government service?

"Women and children first" (or to a lesser extent, the Birkenhead Drill[1][2]) is a historical code of conduct whereby the lives of women and children were to be saved first in a life-threatening situation (typically abandoning ship, when survival resources such as lifeboats were limited) (from Wiki). One practical thing that aid workers can do right now is to insist that authorities prioritise spaces for the vulnerable (in this case, children), and not 'on a first come, first served' basis.

Can I ask what you have done to help these children Glock? You seem to have the answers so I presume you've been over there yourself.

Against - your posts sicken me. This guest poster has done more to help these children than 99% of us ever will, and you are claiming the moral high ground by comparing her efforts to comforting a crying child in Tesco.

Alittlebit - thank you for sharing this, your efforts will be making a difference, however small, to the lives of these children, and your posts will be opening many eyes to the horror that is happening in Calais.