Smuggling, Trafficking, and Exploitation among Unaccompanied Minors Arriving in Friuli Venezia Giulia from the Middle East

In 2019, an important amount of unaccompanied minors arrived in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, most of them claiming to have reached Italy through the Eastern Mediterranean migration route and having being exploited along the way by the same smugglers who turned out to be traffickers and exploiters. The situation represented an emergency so the NGOs involved in their assistance sent a Submission of Information to Special Procedures Report of the OHCHR. This contribution focuses on trafficking and severe forms of exploitation faced by the unaccompanied minors coming from Middle Eastern countries willing to reach Europe. It draws from data collected during a fieldwork conducted in 2019 - 2020 in Greece and Italy and it sheds light on the phenomenon of unaccompanied minors (UAMs) exploited in the two countries, by contributing to explain which public policies adopted to protect minors and govern the policy problem are and where they may have failed. The scarcity of studies and research on the condition of UAM in Greece and along the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkan route, on the forms of exploitation and other violation of human rights, accounts for the need of this article.