Traffickers are demanding UK ‘entry fees’ from child refugees, Unicef report says

Traffickers targeting unaccompanied child refugees and migrants in camps along the French coast are charging an “entry fee” of between 100 and 500 euros, and up to 10 times that amount for passage to Britain, according to a Unicef report.

Those who cannot pay are forced to work and to commit crimes, including helping migrants evade law enforcement, opening lorries and selling drugs or food donated by volunteers in trafficker-controlled night-time markets, the report says.

Based on the testimonies of 61 children, aged between 11 and 17, from seven camps, including Calais and Dunkirk, as well as observations by on-site workers, the report by Unicef UK and Unicef France paints a grim picture of how children are exploited by traffickers on every leg of their journey, including when they reach the UK.

In one instance, police in the “Jungle” camp in Calais were forced to take action when Egyptian children were reported to be selling heroin, the study said.

Children spoke of being asked to perform sexual services, of attacks on others and of being forced to perform sexual acts on their journey for as little as five euros, the study said.

Martha, a 16-year-old girl who arrived in Calais nine months ago, told researchers: “I know that if I pay or offer sex, I will cross more quickly. I have been asked to do this. It’s hard to say no. They have not forced me yet, but they do force other girls.”

An Eritrean girl, known as W, told researchers she was regularly raped and forced into prostitution on a number of occasions on her journey in order to earn more money quickly. She said: “It was very hard; I didn’t have control over anything, I depended on the traffickers. I wanted to end it all in Libya as it was too difficult, but as that was worse I continued on.”

The report says: “In our interviews with the children, several have mentioned that girls arrived alone, had resigned themselves to provide sexual services to their trafficker and to the helpers for derisory sums (around €5 euros per session). It has not been possible to know more; the children explained to us that the young girls in question were sent to the UK.”

The study says that, among Afghan boys in particular, the biggest fear was being raped.

“The testimonies that were collected spoke of the necessity of allowing themselves to be sexually abused, especially when the trafficker and his/her friends had been consuming alcohol. Although it is impossible to quantify the number of victims who are children, this form of exploitation appears relatively commonplace across the various sites.”

Unicef said it had found up to 20 young women working as prostitutes in the Calais camp. “The young girls (children or adults) know that, if they are unable to raise the sum demanded by the traffickers, it will be significantly more difficult for them to reach the UK,” it concludes.

“On the basis of the information gathered, it can be assumed that two types of prostitution take place along the coast: the first is prostitution, to which some women have “resigned” themselves in order to cross over more quickly, which is not necessarily organised; the second is linked to the pimps who exploit the young women in places outside of the coastal areas (Paris, Lille, perhaps Madrid).”

Oliver Peyroux, a researcher for Unicef, said: “We were shocked at how much of the camps were controlled by the traffickers. When the borders are well controlled by the authorities, the traffickers have more power.”

Unicef is calling on the UK government to do more to reunite children with their families in the UK.