Spain : The number of unaccompanied minor migrants increased by 60%

According to a report presented Monday in Madrid and conducted by NGO Save the Children, 6,414 unaccompanied minor migrants arrived in Spain in 2017, a number that increased by 60% compared to the previous years, says Eco Diario.

According to the same source, during the same year, 2,417 newcomers with an immigrant background were registered, 2,147 of them arrived using boats. In the previous years, the total number of unaccompanied minor migrants did not exceed 4,000 registered children : «In 2014, they were 3,660, in 2015 they were 3,341 and by 2016, they had reached 3,997» . «The dazzling gap» was reached in 2017, with «6,414 children registered», says Andrés Conde, CEO of Save the Children.

Moreover, he says that unaccompanied minors are not all part of the system. In 2016, «the track of 825 minors was lost. They may have moved to another city, travel outside Spain or fall into the traffic network», adds the same source.