The Government of the Canary Islands currently shelters 1,250 African and Asian minors who have applied to Spain for refuge, asylum or international protection after arriving to the islands in precarious boats, among whom the majority are young people from Mali and Senegal.
That is, practically 20% of all migrant minors hosted in the Canary Islands centers (one in five) are asylum seekers, whose total number is currently around 5,800.
According to figures provided to Efe by the General Directorate for the Protection of Children of the autonomous community, the children and adolescents that the State Administration will now have to take care of have been in the Canary Islands' reception resources for an average of 458 days (one year and three months).
Their current number does not exactly coincide with the thousand referred to in the precautionary measures order made public this Wednesday by the Supreme Court, since it is a living figure, which changes almost daily, the sources specify.
Because, since the Canary Islands Government presented its appeal to request that the State be obliged to assume its powers in matters of international protection with minors, some of the sheltered young people have reached the age of majority, others have newly arrived to the islands and boys who had not applied for asylum, have now done so.
Of those 1,250, just over half a thousand have already completed the interview in which the State takes note of the reasons why they request international protection in Spain. The rest have started the process or have clearly expressed their willingness to do so.
Among the half a thousand who have already done the interview, the majority are boys originating from Mali (62%) and Senegal (23%). They are followed, with much smaller numbers, by children and adolescents from Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Morocco and Pakistan. The vast majority are men (92%).
In the case of nationals of Mali, there has been for years a recommendation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in favor of their protection due to the situation of war and violence suffered by that Sahel country.
