A few dozen young migrants posing as minors and association activists gathered on Friday, November 20 near the Ministry of Health in Paris to demand emergency accommodation during confinement, an AFP journalist noted.
Read also: Coronavirus: State and associations try to accommodate migrants and the homeless
According to the associations present to support them, 100 and 150 “
unaccompanied minors
” are currently deprived of any support in Paris, because pending the examination of an appeal against the decision of the French authorities not to recognize them as minors.
The organizations Médecins sans frontières (MSF), Utopia56, Comède, Midis du MIE and Timmy are calling "
for places to be opened in hotels as a matter of urgency to give these vulnerable people the means to protect themselves, too, from the pandemic
".
“
They are forgotten.
During the first confinement, these young people had been taken care of.
This time no.
There is a lack of anticipation and will,
”denounced Corinne Torre, head of France at MSF, whose center dedicated to unaccompanied foreign minors in the Parisian suburbs also sees an influx of“
30 kids every day without any solution
”.
"
There is a real desire to no longer take these people into account, seen as migrants and not as children.
», She continues on the occasion of the International Day of the Rights of the Child.
One of them, El Hadj, a slender Guinean who claims to be 16 years old but was declared of full age because he could not present a birth certificate extract, held up a sign "
Welcome us
".
For the moment, it is the association Timmy which hosts it, "
but it would take something more stable, to be able to go to school
", he explains.
In France, 31,000 unaccompanied foreign minors were identified as of December 31, 2019.
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