Twenty-four underage asylum seekers have been reported as officially missing by organisations who had been searching for weeks and found no trace of the youngsters, reported Caritas, one of the aid agencies tracking the youngsters on behalf of Fedasil, on Monday.
The presence and severity of the reception crisis are no longer a secret, or surprise, as stories about people who have had to flee their homes and are now sleeping on the streets of Brussels have been making headlines for months.
In November of last year, the situation was so dire that even the most vulnerable asylum seekers, including families with young children, were sleeping on the streets, as were unaccompanied minors, of which 150 were counted. Of those, 24 are now officially missing.
The missing minors include Bossa, Mouctar, Ilham, Hemeo Saleh, Abdul Khalil, Abdul Hadi, Wahdat, Kamran, Barry, Rahmatullah, Tamim, Wahidullah, Ahmadzai and Christ, who came to Belgium from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Guinea, Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Afghanistan.
Disappearing under the radar
While 24 is already an alarmingly high number, the reality is probably much worse, experts and aid organisations believe. In October last year, the alarm was already raised that refugee children had been disappearing under the radar. The disappearances are largely due to the limited official figures about how many minors had not received shelter.
Still, the phenomenon of missing asylum-seeking minors is not a problem limited to Belgium: between 2018 and 2020, at least 18,292 unaccompanied children seeking refuge in Europe went missing.
As for the 24 known minors, Caritas and other aid organisations have been looking for them in recent months on the streets, emergency shelters, squatter camps and places where transmigrants usually stay, but have so far been unsuccessful.
"The result of mismanagement around the reception crisis and failure to find solutions. 24 minors are officially reported missing," said Thomas Willekens of Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen (Refugee Work Flanders)
The fear is that they have ended up in the hands of human traffickers or were recruited by street gangs. Alternatively, they may have travelled on to another country when they were told be Belgian authorities that there is no space for them.
State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor also pointed out the risk of sexual exploitation of minors, especially Afghan boys.
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"The reality is that young people sometimes travel on, regardless of whether they have a place at Fedasil or not," de Moor also stated. "They were invited to the FPS Justice anyway to undergo an age test."
Fedasil has prepared a disappearance sheet for 25 missing asylum seekers, one of whom has since come forward through his lawyer. "Fedasil continues to try to integrate the other group into the network as well."
