(Deutsche Welle) The increased influx of refugees to Europe in recent years has also brought tens of thousands of refugee minors to Germany, as well as other countries. Many of them vanished from the authorities’ radar after arrival, either immediately or at some later date. At the start of 2017, Germany’s Federal Criminal Investigation Office (BKA) recorded more than 8,400 missing refugee minors. By the start of 2019, that number had fallen to around 3,200.
This decrease is not, however, a signal that all is now well, as Tobias Klaus from the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Refugee Minors explains. “The numbers themselves have, of course, decreased considerably,” he says. “But that’s connected to the fact that there have also been considerably fewer underage refugees arriving in the country.”
