Applications for asylum from unaccompanied minors across the whole of the European Union have more or less fallen steadily from a peak of more than 88,000 in 2015.
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00:00The U.N. Children's Fund has urged governments to prioritize the safety of migrant children
00:07whose parents are killed at sea. The UNICEF statement comes after two boats sank in waters
00:13off eastern Tunisia on Thursday, killing at least 27 people. It's a popular departure
00:18point for irregular migrants hoping to make it to Europe.
00:23It's intolerable for a child to see his mother die in front of him. It's intolerable for a child to die
00:31in the waters of the sea. But we've seen too many, and we can't think every day that it's the last.
00:41Because from 2014 to today, the numbers speak for themselves.
00:45According to the International Organization of Migrations Missing Migrant Tracker,
00:502,275 people were unaccounted for in the Mediterranean in 2024.
00:57That brings the total number of people missing since 2014 to more than 31,000.
01:03The majority of those are believed to have died on the perilous central Mediterranean route,
01:08which is used by people smugglers from Libya and Tunisia to ferry people towards Italy.
01:13According to Eurostat, in 2023, more than 2,200 people considered to be
01:19unaccompanied minors filed asylum applications with Italian authorities.
01:24For Greece in the same year, that figure was over 2,600, while Spain handled just 30 such
01:31applications. Applications for asylum from unaccompanied minors across the whole of the
01:37European Union have generally fallen steadily from a peak of more than 88,000 in 2015.