Migrant minors forced to sell sex at Ventimiglia crossing

Migrant children in Italy are being driven into prostitution to obtain safe passage to France, a new report from the international non-governmental organisation Save the Children has revealed.

The study, ‘Young Invisible Enslaved: Children Victims of Trafficking and Labour Exploitation in Italy’, said minors, predominantly from sub-Saharan Africa, have resorted to prostitution when they cannot afford to meet the financial demands of traffickers along the Italy-France border.

Girls are particularly vulnerable on these journeys. For a trip between Nigeria and Italy, these girls can build up debt of up to 30,000 euros. Some were also reportedly forced to perform sexual acts in exchange for food and shelter.

Raffaela Milano, the Director of the Italy-Europe programme at Save the Children, said: “These are very young, and particularly at-risk girls, who are among the invisible flow of unaccompanied migrant minors in transit at the northern Italian border who, in an attempt to reunite with their relatives or acquaintances in other European countries, are deprived of the opportunity to travel safely and legally.”

Conditions have worsened since makeshift camps illegally erected in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, a transit hub for migrants attempting to cross into France, were cleared by the authorities in April.

Migrant children have been forced to live on the streets in “degrading, promiscuous and dangerous conditions”, the report stated.

The problem is not limited to the area along the border between France and Italy. According to the report, migrant children were also being sexually exploited in other parts of Italy, including Rome, Veneto, Abruzzo, Marche and Sardinia.

A previous report from Oxfam in June pointed out that 91 percent of the 17,337 children who arrived in Italy in 2017 were unaccompanied, a figure that accounted for the vast majority of unaccompanied child migrants who arrived in European countries in that year. The report also revealed that a quarter of the 16,500 migrants who had crossed Ventimiglia into France between August 2017 and April 2018 were children.

TMP – 21/08/2018

Photo caption: Migrant children forced to sell sex at Italy-France crossing, says Save the Children. Photo credit: Jonathan Hyams/Save the Children