Amnesty International has warned of "serious failures" in the shared responsibility between the State and the Canary Islands Government, with violation of the rights of migrant children hosted in macro-centers, with cases of violence by workers towards children and with "great lack of coordination" in the Police and Prosecutor's Office between both provinces in the archipelago.
These are part of the data from the report As of today I have nothing. The failure of the system to protect children arriving in the Canary Islands", which was presented this Friday in the regional Parliament by the head of Institutional Relations of Amnesty, María José Pérez, and the head of Research, Virginia Álvarez.
The latter was in charge of relating the basic lines of the report with the warning that, among the most significant situations that have been identified, the first is that hosting minors in macro-centers does not guarantee compliance with the best interests of children.
What was an emergency device that emerged in 2020 has become permanent and minors are hosted in the 82 macro-centers spread throughout the islands where "it is not possible to develop individualized educational programs or detect their needs and vulnerabilities".
Complaints of violence against children by center workers have also been documented and Amnesty International has been able to
verify that they do not have enough staff and that in some cases their training is deficient, which is aggravated by the lack of inspection by the competent authorities.
Mechanisms to be able to complain
For this reason, Amnesty asks that adequate mechanisms be guaranteed so that minors can submit their complaints confidentially and without fear of reprisals, not with a complaint box that the center director sees, Virginia Álvarez pointed out.
And what has been seen particularly in the Canary Islands is that it is necessary to better coordinate the different administrations because their current lack of coordination "is bringing serious consequences", since due diligence is not guaranteed in the detection and identification of minors from the moment they arrive on the coasts "starting with the reluctance of the Police".
In this regard, Amnesty has conveyed to the Prosecutor's Office its concern about the fact that the Immigration Prosecutor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife "accepted (during his interview) that there were minors in adult centers knowingly".
Virginia Álvarez was "very" surprised to see how the two Canary Islands provinces function so differently in relation to the processing of minors' documentation, including authorities, the Prosecutor's Office and Forensic Medicine, so she has called attention to the need to unify protocols.
Co-responsible communities, not just supportive
In addition, Amnesty has pointed out that it asks the rest of the autonomous communities to be "co-responsible" for the well-being of children because it is not a matter of mere solidarity, it is a task for the entire State, while expressing its concern about the instrumentalization of minors as a political tool and hate speech.
"I ask political leaders for restraint in speeches that criminalize an entire group and leave them in a much more vulnerable situation, appealed the representative of Amnesty.
The Canary Islands reception system is "overwhelmed" but with a review of certain mechanisms the care for these children and their transition to adult life can be improved, and the State and other regions must also respond in solidarity to their reception, she insisted.
She also thanked the parliamentary groups that "in large majority" share the diagnosis made by Amnesty, although in the parliamentary commission the representative of Vox, Paula Jover, reproached this non-governmental entity for having "thrown in the towel" of fighting at the origin and accused of "discrimination" in the measures proposed in relation to Spanish minors.
Impossibility of return
Álvarez replied that foreign minors cannot be returned because in their countries, including Morocco, there is no protection system for their reception, to expose that the almost 4,000 Ukrainian minors who arrived in Spain have not been the subject of political debate, which in her opinion "places the debate very well".
"Haven't Ukrainian children been a problem because they are blonde and blend in completely with the Spanish population? Well, my customs are very different from Ukrainian ones," said Álvarez, who has appealed to see this issue as a solution and not as a problem to manage.
She has emphasized that there are no legal and safe ways to emigrate from Africa to Europe despite the fact that no one should risk their lives to come to Spain, and she has spoken of the fear that mothers who get into boats with their babies go through because they have no other way to arrive.
Immigration "is a hose full of holes" and when Greece is covered, Italy jumps and if not the Canary Islands, and people from the Middle East are arriving to the islands while Europe "looks the other way and closes the doors".
And if they are minors, they are the ones who flee the violence of their country or are the only life solution for their parents, the life insurance for their entire family and therefore they have a feeling of wasting time when they arrive at a reception center.
Africans are eager to integrate and not waste time, but Amnesty has spoken with Malians and Sudanese who arrived in the Canary Islands at the age of 15 and the National Police "did not think" to give information to those minors about their right to join an international protection system, Álvarez criticized.
Instrumentalization of migrants
With the European migration pact "that is coming to us" the Canary Islands may find themselves in a complicated situation "if things are not done well" and for this, she insisted, more political will and less instrumentalization of migrants is needed, and in this last thing she has also blamed Morocco.
In addition, she considered that the central government can do much more than the agreements to divert minors and considered that the Supreme Court's rulings regarding asylum policy are "a wake-up call" on the need to review procedures, also by the Police and the Prosecutor's Office.
Amnesty asks that the training of police, prosecutors, doctors in general, lawyers, interpreters and personnel responsible for the reception be guaranteed, as there must be an individualized evaluation and ensure that each minor is heard and has adequate advice for their maturity, in addition to free legal assistance.
An unaccompanied foreign child is first and foremost a person who needs protection because, precisely because of their situation, they are exposed to being subjected to labor and sexual exploitation, the latter being frequent in the case of girls and trafficking networks.
Amnesty has also appealed to the situation of these minors who, in many cases, come from countries at war such as Mali and Sudan or escape situations of violence and slavery even in Senegal and Morocco.
