Refugee report - Treatment of children is a disgrace

THE Irish Refugee Council’s report on separated children seeking asylum in Ireland is an indictment of our bureaucracy.

In 1999 there were only 32 documented cases of children separated from their parents arriving in the country, but by March of this year that number had jumped to 2,717 separated children. About 40% of them were reunited with family who had already arrived in this country, but some 60% were not, which poses a huge problem. Of the 1,085 children who arrived in 2000, some 9% were between the ages of six and nine, while another 9% were under the age of five. The latter usually arrived with an older sibling, but there were many who arrived with people who were not related at all.

The unaccompanied, or separated children, like their adult counterparts, originated mainly in Nigeria, Romania, Sierra Leone, Moldova and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in that order. They arrived by the same means as the adults.