Separated children: who are they?

August 2006, Montreal airport: one morning, a 17 year old girl disembarks a flight from Moscow without luggage and presents a Cuban passport. She states to the immigration officer that she is meeting her boyfriend who seems to be around 40 years old. Immediately the young girl is signalled to provincial authorities. (Witnessed account from an immigration officer)

In 2005, a young 15 year old Indian boy mentions that his mother put him on a plane after his father started receiving threats. After the authorities contacted his mother, she told them that she did not want her son back who is currently being looked after by family members in Canada. (Peel Children's Aid Society)

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defines separated children as being persons less than 18 years of age who are found outside their country of origin or from their usual country of residence, and who are separated from their parents or from their legal or customary primary caregiver. These children could be alone or accompanied by one of more members of their extended family, or by other adults that do not have any family ties with them. Within the category of separated children, we can distinguish non accompanied minors as those who present themselves completely alone at the border.

The International Bureau for Children's Rights (IBCR) has chosen to retain this term of separated chldren, estimating that it better defines situations which these children are deemed to confront. Although some of these children seem to be accompanied, they suffer as much socially and psychologically. The adults that accompany them do not have inevitably the capacity to assume responsibility for the children or act in their best interest.

In spite of the absence of reliable statistics, the organizations that intervene with these children note that the majority of them are between 16 and 17 years of age. However, a sizeable number of children would be less than 16 years and some less than 10 years. It seems as though a majority of boys have come from African and Asian continents, and less often from Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Often separation is a consequence of armed conflicts or poverty. These separated children can also be forced to immigrate for various other reasons: to avoid a child marriage, premature enrolment within the army, sexual exploitation, genocide, or an epidemic. There may also be persecutions due to their ethnic membership, or due to their divergent political or religious opinions.

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