Without help, families face a lonely search for missing refugee children
After losing its way in the dark waters of the Aegean between Turkey and the Greek island of Lesbos, the small wooden boat carrying Ghulam Haidar, his young family and nearly 50 other passengers was hit by strong winds and waves.
As the boat sank, Mr Haidar managed to save his seven-year-old son, Shahzad, but he lost sight of the others. For the past eight months he has been in Turkey searching for his wife Shila, his daughter Zahra, 8, and his three-year-old son Behzad.
“I’m just living to find my family,” said Mr Haidar, who is from Afghanistan. He has contacted coast guards, immigration officers, international aid groups and the authorities in both Greece and Turkey. But so far, he’s found nothing. His two missing children smile cheekily in a photo posted on the Facebook page “Search and find your family for refugees”.
The page posts photographs and information about missing refugees, and has dealt with 172 cases of missing children since September, said its Austria-based founder Jimmy Nagy.
It was through this page that the Thomson Reuters Foundation made contact with Mr Haidar, but so far his pleas for information have answered none of his questions about his missing family.
“I’ve searched all the hospitals but I’ve found no sign of them or their bodies. That’s why I believe they are alive,” Mr Haidar said by phone from Istanbul.
Like Mr Haidar, many other families who have fled war and poverty in West Asia, Africa and Asia, are searching for missing children. Without help, they are left to conduct their desperate investigations alone.
In January, the EU’s criminal intelligence agency Europol said at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees had vanished after arriving in Europe, at risk of falling prey to trafficking gangs.
Many missing or unaccompanied children are thought to be in Greece, the EU country that has become the staging post for attempts by refugees and migrants hoping to reach wealthier northern Europe.
With many camps and detention facilities in Greece full, Karen Shalev-Greene, director of the Centre for the Study of Missing Persons at the University of Portsmouth, believes that hundreds of children are living in squats or on the street — making them vulnerable to exploitation.
In Exarcheia, an Athens neighbourhood plastered with anarchist posters, an old school building is being used as a squat. Toddlers weave around bags of rice donated by a Chinese charity in a building now home to over 300 refugee and migrant families.
It was near to here that volunteers from Zaatar, a group that runs a shelter for unaccompanied minors and vulnerable families, discovered a group of Syrian boys, between 12 and 16, outside a brothel, smoking cigarettes. Keeping track of unaccompanied children is a tough job, particularly in an area known for its people smugglers.
“These kids are very vulnerable,” said Zaatar’s founder, who asked not to be named.
“The big agencies are not doing their work — either they don’t want to or they don’t have the means — so we try to be a good influence on them.” Zaatar gives the children phones so volunteers can stay in contact, making sure they stay safe.
As per the European Commission, missing unaccompanied children are the responsibility of individual EU member states.
But a February report by Missing Child-ren Europe — an umbrella group of some 30 child protection groups — highlighted a “clear lack of ownership” in cases involving missing, unaccompanied children who often slip through the cracks.
