Un article écrit par Rebecca Rapparini
In the last two years, there has been a steady increase in the arrivals of unaccompanied children and adolescents in the Canary Islands1. These are young people who have migrated or have been forced to flee their countries of origin without an adult of reference. The route from West African nations to the Canary Islands, known as the Canary route, is one of the most dangerous routes to Europe.
Particularly over the past decade, the European Union and the Spanish state have framed the arrival of migrant people to Europe as both an emergency and a threat. This has prompted a securitised response, marked by the strengthening of physical borders and policing at the periphery of the EU, like the Canary islands, which has resulted in the violation of migrants’ equal access to fundamental rights and to dignified, humane reception conditions.
Crossing the border and entering Spain, and by extension the EU, means entering isolated reception centres, characterised by a detentive, securitarian system that does not often respect minimum standards. In Spain, these facilities are known as CATE (Centros de Atención Temporal de Extranjeros, or Temporary Attention Centres for Foreigners), used primarily for identification purposes, and CIE (Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros, or Foreign National Internment Centres); actual detention centres. These places, in many cases theatres of systematic violation of human rights, are not adequate to welcome migrant and refugee people after a long and dangerous journey. The situation is even more serious when it comes to unaccompanied minors.
This is a particularly vulnerable group exposed to extreme forms of violence, human trafficking, and physical, psychological, and sexual abuse before, during, and after their arrival in EU territory. For this reason, it is essential to have specialized personnel who can identify and accompany them, ensuring their protection from the moment of first arrival. […] In order to protect children, they must first be identified. Identification is the gateway to the rest of the safeguards and rights that are fundamental to upholding the best interests of the child and ensuring their protection. (Report: Vulneración de Derechos Humanos en Canarias 2024, 16)
On the Canary Islands’ coasts, the Red Cross staff and volunteers are responsible for the reception of newcomers, which is why we interviewed the Head of Emergency First Aid for the Immigrant Population for the Province of Las Palmas.
Upon arrival, he tells us, a very basic sorting process is carried out, aimed at identifying the different vulnerability profiles.
Once displaced people arrive by boat in the Canaries, if they have any kind of health problems, […] they are evaluated by a nurse or a doctor, and if they cannot be treated there, they are sent to the reference hospitals on each island. If they don’t have any health problems, they go to the mediation area where the first thing done is to welcome them. That is to say, they are told which island they have arrived on, as on many occasions they are not often aware of such details. They are also informed that all their clothes are going to be changed because the people arriving in the Canary Islands, between 95% and 98% of the time, are completely wet. All their clothes are taken off them to prevent hypothermia. They are given new clothes.
They are also told that all their documents, telephone, money, whatever belongings they have, they have to keep them, where they are given a bag so that they can keep their own documents in hand. And then, later, there is a short interview with the Red Cross mediators, in which they cover very basic points, such as: the person’s name, age, if there is any family unit on board so that that family is not separated during the intervention. And there they ask if they have any chronic conditions, that is, if they have high blood sugar or diabetes, to inform the services on the scene so that this person can be monitored to limit any health concerns and after that they go to a CATE, where they remain for a maximum of 72 hours.
As mentioned in the recent report, “Vulneración de Derechos Humanos en Canarias 2024: Infancia migrante y criminalización” (“Human Rights Violations in the Canaries 2024: Migrant Children and Criminalization”), Red Cross operations on the coast do not guarantee the presence of specialised professional staff to carry out these identification processes, and sometimes there is a lack of interpretation options available for the person assisted to access information in their mother tongue.
In a context where dozens of people arrive simultaneously, the presence of adolescents, i.e. young people whose underage status is not evident, is concealed, or is not declared, has become a real challenge for correct and accurate identification of non-accompanied minors. Indeed, there have been cases of minors in which the police allegedly disregarded the early identification carried out by Red Cross personnel at the port and/or the statements made by the minors themselves, and as a result, these individuals were registered as adults and sent to adult facilities. (Report: Human Rights Violations in the Canaries 2024, 16-17)
The process of child identification is therefore a key moment in guaranteeing access to fundamental children’s rights. The shortcomings of this process reflect a securitarian and criminalising approach, which aims to dehumanise the migrant person. Children are no exception to this policy of violence.
These are the same considerations that emerge when talking to a young Canarian activist of Solidarity Wheel No Borders for Human Rights (based in Melilla), who took part in the first self-organised citizen-led mobilisations in Tenerife from 2020 that developed in the face of the increased arrivals of migrant people by sea. We asked her to tell us about the situation within CATE as well as inside the minor centres.
It was a chaotic, dehumanizing situation. The centres opened rapidly, especially for minors, and it felt like they were treating people as units in a chain store. There was no personalization or care — contracts were given to whoever could do the job cheapest, and people suffered as a result.
Beds were just canvas bunks — not even proper mattresses — placed in the coldest parts of Tenerife. When it rained, everything got soaked. If someone brought in a gas stove to cook food, it was confiscated. Phones were also taken. It was incredibly dehumanizing.
[…]
There were too many people and too few staff. Protecting children was not a priority at all.
I remember that even the interpreters who were on the boats misled new arrivals. They told them things like: “Don’t say you’re a minor. If you do, you’ll get stuck here and won’t be allowed to work.” So many people declared themselves as adults, even if they were underage, just based on that advice — without fully understanding the consequences.
[Inside the minor centres] the staff hired weren’t social workers or educators — they were mostly young men from security firms. That was the preferred profile: defensive, not empathetic. There was zero focus on education or care.
[…]
Sick children were denied medical care. It was violent in every sense, and mostly invisible to the outside world.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Article 2, of “non-discrimination”, and Article 3, of the “best interests of the child”, state the following:
(Article 2) All children have the same rights, regardless of their skin color, religion, origin, or their parents’ beliefs.
(Article 3) Any decision, law, or policy that could affect a child must consider what is best for them.(UNCRC, 1989).
It is clear that what is happening in the Canary Islands, as well as in many other border contexts around the world, openly violates international, as well as European2 and national legislation3. This is based on a unanimous consensus that children, simply as such, should be protected regardless of their origin, nationality or administrative status.
However, in Europe, when migrant children of colour are involved, this consensus seems to be forgotten. Despite the social and legislative consensus that states that all children should be protected whatever their background, a vilifying, discriminatory and racist narrative has taken hold, whereby these children become bargaining chips for electoral politics and weapons used in political battles between parties and governments. (Lo Coco, Calderó Delgado & Cucurull 2024, p.22)
The European Union has not only a humanitarian but also a historical responsibility to welcome people coming from the very countries it once colonised, and continues to dominate and influence through highly extractive colonial and imperialist policies4. This responsibility, we have seen, is on a daily basis ignored and denied by violent, racist and criminalising migration policies implemented by European states, in the name of “securing our borders”.
Long-term measures must be put into place for accompanying migrant children, with the child’s interests and wellbeing at the core, guaranteeing their right to physical and mental integrity, education, health, information, international protection, and full and dignified development. The lack of political action and acknowledgment of the inhumane conditions in reception centres in the Canary Islands—along with clear evidence that children’s basic needs are not being met—constitutes a violation of human rights that must be urgently addressed by the Spanish state and the European Union.
This article was published as part of CREATE, a project funded by the European Union. CRÉER is a project aiming to support unaccompanied minors by offering tailored language classes to hel their social and labour inclusion.
Rebecca is a long-term ESC volunteer at Open Cultural Center. Our volunteer programme is funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps.
- In 2024, the number of irregular arrivals in Spain increased by 6.9 percent from the previous year, totaling 47,165 people. On the Canary Islands, there was a particularly marked increase of 12 percent, with 34,087 arrivals between January and October of the same year (Report: Vulneración de Derechos Humanos en Canarias, 2024). ↩︎
- Council of Europe and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2023. https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/protecting-children-at-europe-s-borders-new-guidance-for-border-officials-and-other-authorities ↩︎
- Estrategia Estatal de Derechos de la Infancia y la Adolescencia 2023-2030 et Ley Orgánica 8/2021, art. 2.1 ↩︎
- Rohan Shah, “A Western Delusion: Narratives surrounding Neo-colonialism in Africa”, 2024 ↩︎
