Why Do Moroccan Children Top the List of Missing Foreigners in Spain?

Reports indicate that Moroccans top the list of missing foreigners in Spain in particular and in Europe in general. Many questions are raised about the possible reasons behind the increase of this phenomenon.

The annual report of the National Center for the Disappeared (CNDES) affiliated with the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, revealed that the majority of the foreigners who disappeared in Spain are Moroccans, and most of them are minors.

It revealed that in 2021 the Spanish Ministry of Interior received 22,285 reports of disappearances in the country, which means that 61 people disappeared every day last year.

Concerning the nationalities of the persons reported missing, of a total of 113 different nationalities, 68 percent of them were Spanish citizens. Morocco, Algeria, and Romania were the countries that followed Spain in the number of missing citizens.

 

Missing Minors

Spanish newspaper ABC disclosed that the ministry report indicated that, as of December 31, a number of 1,928 cases of total disappearances reported in 2021 remained active, nearly five percent more than in 2020 and 2019.

The same source pointed out that more than 22,000 reports of disappearance correspond to 14,777 people, and that 3,990 complaints were repeated and were reported on more than one occasion in 2021 or in previous years.

The aforementioned official report confirmed that 66 percent of the reports of disappearances received by the country's interior concerned minors and children, and that the 13–17-year-old group accounted for 64 percent of the total reports of disappearances registered by the ministry.

By gender, 58 percent of reported disappearances concern men and 42 percent are women, while the Spanish provinces with the highest prevalence are Las Palmas (3446), Madrid (2205), Barcelona (2179) and Valencia (1085).

 

Similar Pattern in Europe

Moroccan missing minors is not an exceptional event in Europe, over 18,000 unaccompanied child migrants have gone missing after landing in European countries since 2018; most of them came from Morocco.

The cross-border journalism collective Lost in Europe, stated that between January 2018 and December 2020, 18,292 unaccompanied child migrants went missing in Europe. In other words over 16 children vanished every day.

In a joint investigation between the British newspaper the Guardian and Lost in Europe, they collected and analyzed data on missing minors from all 27 EU countries, including Norway, Moldova, Switzerland, and the UK.

They found that although children from countries like Algeria, Guinea, and Afghanistan were also disappearing, the majority of the children who went missing were of Moroccan origin.

The collective's journalists found that the information was often either inconsistent or incomplete, emphasizing that the number of missing minors could be much higher.

Federica Toscano, head of advocacy and migration at Missing Children Europe, told the Guardian that “The high number of missing children is a symptom of a child-protection system that doesn’t work.” However, she stressed that the data was exceedingly important for assessing and understanding the depth of the issue in Europe.

“Criminal organizations are increasingly targeting migrant children. Especially unaccompanied ones and many of them become victims of labour and sexual exploitation, forced begging and trafficking.”

The Missing Children Europe, stated that the missing persons reports are available for only one out of four trafficked children, and one out of six unaccompanied children in care. 

 

Into the Arms of Traffickers

In an interview with Al-Estiklal Hamza Genouni, expert in sociology and researcher at Kent University said: “In many European countries, criminal organizations often target and force unaccompanied children, some as young as 13, into sexual exploitation or labor.”

He added: “Because of the ill-treatment in the shelters, many of the minors flee the centers, becoming vulnerable to exploitation from the drug, weapon or sex mafia that is very active, especially in Spain.”

He explained: “Many of them flee the centers in order to be able to act independently. However, with their irregular status and their young age, the children turn towards informal work or criminality to support themselves. Thus, human trafficking networks pounce on the opportunity to exploit them taking advantage of their vulnerable situation.”

A spokesperson for the European Commission told the Guardian that essentially, European Union member states needed “to take action to prevent and respond to the disappearances of children in migration by improving data collection and cross-border collaboration.”

The Guardian pointed out that the disappearance of minors corresponds to two main points of failure. First, the failure of child protection services in the home country, and the definite failure of the European institutes in acting on the disappearance and violence against the minors.
 

Death Scandals

A report issued by Al-Estiklal on February 1, 2022, highlighted the misery of the Moroccan minors in Spain.

Before his death, a Moroccan minor reported the ill-treatment he was subjected to with his friends, including starvation and torture in Spanish minor migrants’ shelter at the autonomous Spanish archipelago the Canary Islands, the report said.

The Moroccan minor’s death scandal confirmed the human rights organizations' frequent complaints about the violence against immigrant minors in minor shelters.

In this regard, the El Cierre Digital newspaper reported that the police in the Canary Islands found the Moroccan child dead in a street, stressing that he was a minor until the date of his death, contrary to what had been circulated about his release from the minors’ center after reaching 18 years old.

The newspaper highlighted that the minor asked the administrative body of the social institution to return him to the Moroccan city of Dakhla after encountering the severe ill-treatment reality. However, the administration did not respond to his request because of what was described as administrative bureaucracy.

This mysterious death was another sad incident under the same umbrella with the tragedy of the Moroccan Ilyass Tahiri who was murdered in the Tierras de Oria juvenile center in the Spanish city Almeria in July 2019. These minors’ horrible fate depicted the miserable conditions of other Moroccan minors in the Spanish shelters.