Norway has no overview of sexual abuse of refugee children

Thorbjørn Jagland.Secretary General of the Council of Europe.Photo:wikimedia.org

Abuses against refugee children are underreported, warns Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland. Norway is among the countries which do not keep statistics.

The Council of Europe has asked 41 countries for statistics showing the number of minors who have been victims of sexual abuse or exploitation.

Only a few countries have been able to put numbers on the table.

– Under-reporting of sexual abuse and exploitation of refugee children and lack of identification of victims are major challenges, says Jagland.

He urged Member States to increase their efforts to get an overview and to offer assistance to those in need.

The European network of ombudsmen for children (ENOC) estimates that 337,000 minors were registered as asylum seekers in Europe in 2015. Of these, 88,300 were unaccopanied.

The Directorate of Immigration (UDI) in Norway has informed the Council of Europe that it does not have permission to collect data of sexual crimes against children. The Directorate has therefore not been able to present figures. UDI has made some manual anonymous records of such cases, but these figures are considered unsafe and are, according to UDI for internal use only.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today

 

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