Rome: At Rome’s Termini station, thousands of illegal migrant children arrive, desperate to make money however they can.
In broad daylight, groups of boys cluster together in a known pick-up location. As we drive past — as if on cue — a group of Egyptian kids is approached by an Italian man. Further down the street other kids glance around, seemingly on the look-out. We watch as money — and something else — is exchanged. Then they see our camera and scurry away.
Later, one agrees to talk to us. He is just a teenager. ‘The illegal stuff’ is the easiest, in Rome and across the country, he tells me. That ‘illegal stuff’ is sex trafficking and drug dealing.
We came to Italy reporting for CNN’s Freedom Project, retracing the steps of the unaccompanied Egyptian children arriving here in their thousands. Boys — sometimes as young as 9 and 10 — forced to work on smuggling ships and then dumped on the Italian coast. Some even man the boats ferrying illegal migrants.
Italian law allows children smuggled here to remain legally, and impoverished Egyptian parents are paying thousands of dollars on the mirage of a better life. If their children make it, they can send money home. The lucky few stay in Italian government-run children’s homes; but thousands more disappear, making their way to the big cities.
On the Nile Delta, in the village where our investigation began, we were surrounded by parents eager for news of their children. Mothers crowded around us with pictures and documents. Their sons were forced onto ships, they said. Forced to work, forced to man the boats on the potentially deadly journey across the Mediterranean.
But while some mothers cried for their sons’ safe return, others appeared more interested in the financial rewards.
Dr Nasser Ahmad Mesalam, from the Egyptian National Council of Motherhood and Childhood, works with families of these child migrants. “I saw things that would cause your viewers to wonder in disbelief,” he told us. “One family, they’d lost two children on the sea crossing to Italy and they still sent their last remaining son. Can you believe it?”
The answer he said, was to deter both the parents and the smugglers: “There has to be zero tolerance under law for the brokers of this. They tempt parents with an awaiting paradise. We need zero tolerance under law for both the parents and the broker. The child in all of this is the victim.”
— Nima Albagir is a senior international correspondent for CNN
