Research on the provision of support to migrant victims of torture has emerged only relatively recently. At the Third Annual Expert Workshop of the UN Fund for Torture, a representative from Doctors for Human Rights described the ‘silent epidemic' of psychological trauma suffered by thousands of migrants who have survived torture, including asylum seekers and refugees. Migrant children victims of torture receive even less attention in existing research.
We spoke with Kristina Gologanova, the Executive Director of Reachout Foundation, an NGO whose main purpose is the structured long-term assistance of children and teenagers deprived of family and parental care in Bulgaria. Kristina is also a resource person of Know How centre, which manages ChildHub in Bulgaria. She is a specialist in the areas of unaccompanied minors (UAM) and torture victims.
What are the experiences of migrant children on the Bulgarian border?
Early this week I participated in a meeting with some UAM. Some of them shared with me that they have personally experienced or witnessed beatings, robbery and intimidation with police dogs before being forced to return to Turkey by the border police patrols.
Most UAM make several attempts to cross the Turkish–Bulgarian border in order to reach Bulgarian territory. According to the testimonies of some UAM they were forcibly turned into the Turkish territory on their attempt to enter Bulgaria. Recently, a 16-year-old Afghan boy shared with me that before the group he had tried to cross the border with was pushed back, the group was physically abused by the border police officers and attacked by police dogs. Furthermore, they were stripped, and robbed of the money, food and water which they had been carrying with them, before being pushed back to Turkey.
Of course, this is not the experience of all UAM or migrant children. But there are still cases when border police, instead of identifying UAM who are very vulnerable, push them back and even abuse them.
Throughout your work, do you encounter children or minors in detention? What are their living conditions?
According to Law on Aliens in the Republic of Bulgaria (LARB)[1] the detention of UAM is forbidden, so UAM should not be detained in Special Homes for Temporary Accommodation of Foreigners in Busmantsi and Lyubimets and in Border Police detention facilities in Elhovo.
Despite this, there are cases when the UAM are not identified as such, because of wrong age assessment or attachment to adults, and are detained for some period. Last time when I worked on such a case it was in 2017. Then UAM was identified two months after the detention, he was suffering depression and anxiety. Immediately after the identification the Child Protection Directorate was informed and the boy was sent to a Family Type Placement Centers. I provided him with an orientation and also psychosocial support because he attempted self-harm two times.
LARB limits the duration of detention of accompanied minors to a maximum of three months, which may be extended. Since 2016, the Law in Asylum and Refugees allows he accommodation of children, including UAM, in Closed-Type premises run by the State Agency for Refugees (SAR).
A delegation of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) carried out an ad hoc visit to Bulgaria from 10 to 17 December 2018. The objective of the visit was to examine the treatment and conditions of detention of foreign nationals detained under aliens legislation. To this end, the CPT’s delegation visited Border Police detention facilities in Elhovo, Sofia Airport and Svilengrad (Kapitan Andreevo) and carried out follow-up visits to the Special Homes for Temporary Accommodation of Foreigners in Busmantsi and Lyubimets. In Busmantsi, the delegation also paid a visit to the Closed-Type Premises run by the SAR. The report and the response of the Bulgarian government can be found here. In this report and also in another one published recently by Center for Legal Aid Voice in Bulgaria you can find information about living conditions in the detention centers in Bulgaria.
What are the specific challenges faced by minor children in receiving the necessary psychosocial care?
In 2017 SAR adopted a procedure for best interest assessment. The procedure starts with rapid assessment in the first 24 hours after the registration of the international protection appeal of the child. If the child is identified as vulnerable or at risk, the social experts in SAR must do a comprehensive assessment and refer the child for care, depending on their needs. To do the assessments, SAR use two forms (adapted versions of the forms of Terre des hommes and Bulgarian Red Cross). Additionally, since 2012 SAR uses a PROTECT questionnaire as a tool for early identification of traumatized asylum seekers.
If the appeal is rejected the social worker from the Child Protection Unit under the Social Support Directorate must submit a social report before the court.
Special measures for UAM
According to the Law on Asylum and Refugees, SAR must inform Child Protection Departments for each UAM. The Child Protection Directorate must send a social worker to attend the registration and all the interviews in the framework of asylum procedure. This procedure was strictly followed in 2017. But in 2018, there was a significant deterioration of the protection standard relating to unaccompanied children on behalf of the Child Protection Departments of the Agency for Social Assistance.
All guardians must be appointed by the mayor. Usually there are two or three administrative officers who are determined by the mayor to be guardians. But the practice is different from one municipality to another. Also, there is not a regulation for how many children one guardian is responsible for.
The role of the guardian and the social workers is only formal. Based on my experience almost all of the children do not know the name of their guardians or social worker, and do not how to contact them. There is a lack of communication between the different experts who are working on a concrete case. This is mentioned in the report of Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.[2]
You can see that we have a good structure procedure, but from my point of view it is not enough to guarantee the best interest of the child. As one of the authors of the PROTECT questionnaire I had used it during one-year adaptation period, before it was adopted by SAR. Based on my experience as a social worker supporting victims of torture, UAM, and national children at risk, I know that having a good instrument for identification is really useful, but it is much more important to be well-trained regarding how to identify vulnerable asylum seekers and refugees, including children.
Therefore, I have a big concern that the procedures are only formal, and not always effectively implemented. According to SAR statistical data for the period April 2018 – April 2019, there were 500 identified UAM, 29 identified victims of torture, other forms of serious physical, psychological or sexual violence (of which it is not mentioned whether there are any minors), and 0 victims of human trafficking.
In addition, the phenomena of missing children, from my professional point of view, is a serious signal that children do not receive adequate care, including psychosocial support. There is no official statistical data of how many UAM registered in Bulgaria are missing. But it is very easy to follow that almost all of the UAM are missing, when comparing EUROSTAT data with existing information about how many UAM minors are accommodated in the Reception Center of SAR and in Family Type Placement Centers.
What are the main challenges faced by child protection practitioners working with minor asylum-seeking children in Bulgaria?
Social workers who are part of the Child Protection Department face the following challenges: lack of experience and training regarding how to receive asylum seekers and refugees, how to collect information, how to provide information and counselling, and how to follow-up the cases; lack of interpretation; too many cases for one social worker to be responsible for; lack of coordination mechanism for working on cases of refugee children at risk; and lack of social services, especially residential care and foster families.
What do you think are the most important short and long-term interventions for ensuring that traumatised asylum seekers are able to receive the appropriate care?
Some suggested interventions are: good selection of trained specialists – those who have university degrees, and who have specific knowledge and experience regarding how to work with refugees and asylum seekers; and provision of supervision and additional training to child protection practitioners. There should also be well-managed first reception––not simply a formal procedure, but a substantive, individually-orientated one. Based on my experience the first reception and the identification phase are crucial.
Moreover, there should be coordinated case management, good communication and collaboration between different experts who provide support to the asylum seeker/refugee, and monitoring of the quality of the care and services provided to refugees.