This year, in the “2024 Immigration Statistical Dossier,” INTERSOS renews its commitment to assessing the situation of unaccompanied foreign minors in Italy, raising an alarm about the erosion of their rights and stressing the urgency of concrete measures for their protection and integration.
The 2024 Immigration Statistical Dossier presents a concerning picture of the state of unaccompanied foreign minors in Italy. Over the past year—as highlighted in the report—there has been a notable increase in rights violations against unaccompanied foreign minors hosted in Italy, marking a setback in their protection.
Under the guise of a “migrant emergency,” new regulations introduced from October 2023 onwards are progressively dismantling legal protections for unaccompanied minors, conflicting not only with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that “the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration” in all public actions, but also with the European Council’s strategic framework for child rights.
While numbers have grown—in Italy, 23,226 unaccompanied minors were recorded at the end of last year, compared to 20,288 on December 31, 2022—the flows of unaccompanied minors in 2023 have not reached significant peaks and do not represent an emergency. However, the approach to receiving these minors has increasingly shifted towards an unjustified emergency stance over the past year, with legislative measures that undermine minors’ rights and pose risks to their mental and physical well-being. Among these are the possibility of housing minors in adult centers and age verification based solely on medical examinations that are not always reliable for this purpose.
Confirming this, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in three recent rulings condemned Italy for inadequate reception procedures and the unlawful detention of unaccompanied minors in adult facilities.
Ph by Fabio Bucciarelli