From the Guardian:
From 1 January to 6 December this year, 11,360 unaccompanied children like Jamieson – mainly from Eritrea, Nigeria, Gambia, Somalia and Senegal – arrived on its shores.
‘I did not ever think I would reach here,” says 17-year-old Jamieson, staring down at his dusty blue Crocs, given to him when he disembarked from the rescue boat in Sicily, in August. “I look back and I could have died many times. But I try to stop thinking of it. It is too much pain. Many people are losing their lives.”
Jamieson – not his real name – is staying in a reception centre for unaccompanied children in the Sicilian hilltop town of Montedoro, run by the Etnos Co-operativa charity. He is one of many thousands of minors who are now fleeing their homelands without any family to protect them along the way. According to Save the Children, the youngest child to arrive on his own in Sicily was aged just nine.
From 1 January to 6 December this year, 11,360 unaccompanied children like Jamieson – mainly from Eritrea, Nigeria, Gambia, Somalia and Senegal – arrived on its shores.
‘I did not ever think I would reach here,” says 17-year-old Jamieson, staring down at his dusty blue Crocs, given to him when he disembarked from the rescue boat in Sicily, in August. “I look back and I could have died many times. But I try to stop thinking of it. It is too much pain. Many people are losing their lives.”
Jamieson – not his real name – is staying in a reception centre for unaccompanied children in the Sicilian hilltop town of Montedoro, run by the Etnos Co-operativa charity. He is one of many thousands of minors who are now fleeing their homelands without any family to protect them along the way. According to Save the Children, the youngest child to arrive on his own in Sicily was aged just nine.