RIGHTS-SPAIN: Enclave to Expel Unaccompanied Child Immigrants

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, May 7 2002 (IPS) - The autonomous government of Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, decided this week that it will refuse to accept immigrant children who arrive there unaccompanied by an adult.

The Melilla Government Council approved the decision unanimously just Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report Tuesday that accuses Spain and Morocco of mistreating child immigrants in that city and in Ceuta, another Spanish enclave on the coast.

The HRW report states that the Spanish government summarily expels young children who arrive in Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco, and hands them over to the Moroccan police, who reportedly beat the minors and mistreat them in other ways.

The New York-based non-governmental HRW also says in “Nowhere to Turn: State Abuses of Unaccompanied Migrant Children by Spain and Morocco” that the Moroccan authorities often abandon the would- be emigrant children on unfamiliar streets in the middle of the night.

The human rights group’s researchers verified at a children’s detention-residential centre in Ceuta that there is a “punishment cell” in which children are confined for up to a week. They are not provided adequate bedding and were not given access to a toilet.

According to HRW, “Spanish law guarantees unaccompanied foreign children care and protection on the same basis as Spanish children, including the right to education, health care, temporary residency status, and protection from repatriation when repatriation would put the child in danger.”

The authorities in the two enclaves are violating national law, says the human rights group, and called on the Spanish and Moroccan governments to work together to protect the rights and well-being of the children and to ensure their safe repatriation when possible.

Clarisa Bencomo, one of the HRW investigators, the situation is so terrible at the Ceuta and Melilla detention centres that the children interviewed said they felt safer on the streets.

“No one is caring for these children. Spanish officials violate these migrant children’s human rights in attempting to force them back to Morocco, and the Moroccan officials punish them for having left,” said Bencomo.

Enrique Fernández-Miranda, Spain’s Government Delegate for Foreigners and Immigration, stated that it is “absolutely false” that minors are expelled without due guarantees of safety or that eight-year-old children are left on the streets.

In statements to the Madrid daily ‘El Mundo’, Fernández-Miranda said the state’s first obligation is to protect the minors who flee their homes until they are identified or until they are accepted by the Moroccan authorities.

“Only then are they returned (to Morocco), always with legal recognition by the Spanish Attorney General for Minors, the Moroccan authorities and with a high percentage being identified by their own families,” he said.

“But the ones who assume the protection of these children is Morocco,” pointed out the Spanish official, member of the governing centre-right Popular Party (PP).

Meanwhile, David de Miguel, head of the Spanish office of the non-governmental group Save the Children, told IPS that when faced with this sort of irregular migration, the most important thing is to attend “to the greater interest of the minor involved.”

The children arriving from Morocco do not enter Spain in search of asylum or refuge, nor or they fleeing from war, but rather “their parents send them for economic reasons, because of their extreme poverty,” said De Miguel.

The number of immigrants under age 18 without the required papers and unaccompanied by family members is fewer than 2,000 in all Spain, said the children’s rights activist. Ninety percent of these minors are from Maghreb, or Northern Africa, and the vast majority are Moroccans, though there are also many children from Algeria and Tunisia.

Juan José Imbroda, president of the autonomous Melilla government, stated that the decision to refuse to accept more illegal unaccompanied immigrant children is due to the fact that the residential centres in the city are “overcrowded and collapsing,” in their human and material capacities alike.

Melilla’s Minister of Social Welfare, Isabel Quesada, also of the PP, agreed that the centres are overcrowded and admitted that there are children “sleeping on mattresses on the floor” and there are not enough adults to provide care for them.

Official sources told IPS that the number unaccompanied minors entering Ceuta and Melilla irregularly shot up 78 percent in the first trimester of 2002 compared to the same period in 2001.

Imbroda recognised that it is a “grave” situation, but stated that its origins lie in Morocco, a country he said should “take care of its minors and not export the problem to Melilla.”

To confront this problem, he added, Morocco must provide care for the would-be emigrants, as well as “monitoring the border so that their young people do not cross the border illegally.”

The autonomous government of Melilla stated that the HRW report is false and misrepresents reality and has taken the step of requesting that its experts study the possibility of filing a lawsuit against the document’s authors.

Imbroda said the denunciation would be based on the assertions made in the report that the economy of Melilla (and Ceuta) is based in part on “illicit drug trafficking, and profits gleaned from the smuggling of undocumented migrants into Spanish territory.”

The Social Welfare Minister of Ceuta, Mohamed Chaib, meanwhile, told the press that the information included in the HRW report is questionable and stated that the Spanish enclave provides adequate treatment for unaccompanied immigrant children.

The borders of the Ceuta and Melilla enclaves with Morocco continue to be marked by electric fences and surveillance cameras are in place, but migrants are still able to elude the government controls.

Morocco has laid claim to the sovereignty of both Spanish cities.

There have been cases reported in which parents have tossed their children over the electric fences in hopes that the minors will be taken in and protected on Spanish soil. Tunnels dug under the border fence have also been discovered.