About 18,292 children who sought asylum under state protection in EU+ countries between 2018-2020 are missing, based on data provided by Europe’s official institutions.

Most of them are citizens of Algeria, Eritrea, and Guinea, according to a report published by the public broadcaster for the federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg, RBB,  based on data provided by the analysis group “Lost in Europe”, StudyinPoland.Info reports.

Based on the figures published by “Lost in Europe,” a total of 5,755 children were lost in Italy, 2,642 in Belgium, 2,118 in Spain, and 944 in Switzerland. Most of the children are males (90 per cent) over the age of 15.

Italy has registered the highest number of disappearances between 2019 and 2020, about eight per day, but no data was provided in this regard for 2018.

“We have been taking care of migrant minors in Europe for two years, and we have realized that not only children are disappearing, but also numbers,” Dutch coordinator of Lost in Europe, Geesje Van Haren, pointed out.

Germany’s federal police office data reveals that in Germany, 7,806 children were lost. A total of 7,082 of them were found, while about 724 are still missing.

In this regard, the head of the German children aid association (Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk) Holger Hofmann emphasized that “the federal police office trying to trace the children and youth in the dark is a scandal in terms of children’s rights.”

According to the research of “Lost in Europe,” the statistics provided by European countries’ authorities on unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors “were unsystematic.”

Countries like Denmark, Romania, and France did not register unaccompanied asylum-seeking children at all. On the other hand, Bulgaria does not record the number of accompanied and unaccompanied children separately.

Based on the data provided by the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), there was a 31 per cent decrease marked in the number of asylum applications during 2020, compared to 2019 figures. The numbers show that this was the most profound decrease since 2013.

EASO previously emphasized that the decline in the number of asylum applications in the European Union Member States, Switzerland and Norway is a result of travel restrictions imposed by European countries’ governments in a bid to stop the further spread of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Besides, EASO revealed that 461,300 persons sought international protection in the European Union countries during 2020, compared to  671,200 applications that were filled during 2019.