Refugees have a hard time getting access to Serbian refugee camps, which led Afghan minors, ages 11-17, spend their nights in parks and streets in the cold waiting for luck to continue their journey to the EU.
Bogdan Krasic, employee of “Save the Children International” organization, says that teenagers want to enter western Europe without getting registered in Serbia and choose to lead a homeless lifestyle instead. Due to lack of evidence their ages, minors are often sent to camps for adults in Serbian cities and end up in the streets of Belgrade, too.
Since refugees are being mistreated in Turkey and Greece, they decided to use the “Balkan route” for migration, where they were offered food and medication. Young people who travel alone are controlled by the Afghan chief smuggler called “kachakbar” and local smugglers all along their journey, who support children financially and make it possible for them to make a phone calls with their parents from time to time.
Children happen to be victims of abuse, but they stay quiet about it. On top of that, neither UNICEF nor the UNHCR or the International Red Cross care about the policy changes in migration, which means that there is no reliable data on the number of migrants in 2020.