Vatican official calls for increased focus on Child Refugees

(October 06, 2011) Where "public opinion and political expediency" have led to harsher treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, people still have an obligation to make special efforts to assist child refugees, a Vatican official said. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to U.N agencies in Geneva, focused on the mistreatment of asylum seekers, and especially the unaccompanied minors among them, in an address Tuesday to members of the executive committee of the Office of the U.N High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. In 2008, he said, 11,292 applications for asylum were lodged by unaccompanied minors in 22 member states of the European Union. With the violence across North Africa and the Arab world this year, "hundreds of unauthorized lone boys from the Middle East and other places are making their way across Europe." The archbishop said there are instances in which minors arrive "under false pretences as forerunners to trigger family reunions or as victims of smuggling and trafficking," which means special attention must be paid to the possibility they are being exploited by adults. "In this context, processing children's applications for asylum should be given a greater priority," he said.