More than two-thirds of refugee and migrant children who reached Cyprus and other European countries via Mediterranean and Balkan routes in 2025 were unaccompanied, and many experienced exploitation, three UN agencies said in a report on Wednesday.
Of the 31,100 children who arrived last year in countries including Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain, more than 20,000 were recorded as unaccompanied or separated from a parent or guardian. The report was published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
Overall child arrivals by land and sea fell by 25 per cent from 2024. However, the share of children travelling alone rose to 67 per cent from 51 per cent.
The agencies interviewed more than 4,600 people aged 15 to 24 travelling along the Mediterranean, West African Atlantic and Western Balkan routes, and nearly half had experienced physical violence. Most described several forms of violence, including torture and kidnapping in transit and at border crossings, and some reported forced labour.
About one in ten of those interviewed who had used the Eastern Mediterranean route said they had been falsely promised well-paid jobs, safe journeys or legal travel documents. Libya was the country most often named as the place where abuses took place.
The proportion of unaccompanied children was highest among arrivals in Italy and Spain, at 86 per cent. Italy also recorded a 12 per cent rise in child arrivals, many of them from Egypt, Eritrea, Bangladesh and Somalia.
The report said poverty, conflict and environmental hazards were among the reasons people make perilous sea crossings. It added that shrinking safe migration pathways appeared to be pushing more children into dangerous journeys and into the hands of smugglers.
“This report shows how exposed they [children] are to violence and exploitation,” IOM Director General Amy Pope said in a statement. She pointed to limited safe pathways and children’s reliance on smugglers. She also urged closer cooperation between European states and countries along the routes to counter smuggling networks that prey on minors.
The number of children in refugee resettlement procedures in Europe fell to 3,400 in 2025 from 8,900 a year earlier. Only 199 children were relocated between European countries under the Voluntary Solidarity Mechanism, a drop of 67 per cent, and none of them were unaccompanied.
The EU arrangement, launched in 2022, allows countries receiving large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers to relocate some of them to other participating European states on a voluntary basis.
(With information from Reuters)
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