By Maya Palit
With the UK’s Home Office announcing on Wednesday that it would wrap up ‘Dubs’, its scheme allowing up to 3000 unaccompanied child refugees into the country, and set the cap at 350 minors instead, news about the horrific conditions in refugee camps is coming to light. In a gruesome addition to the stories that have been emerging out of Calais, volunteers at camps in Dunkirk, North France, have revealed that women and children are being raped, beaten up, and sexually assaulted on a very regular basis by traffickers.
According to a recent report , sometimes this is done in exchange for blankets or the promise of being taken to the UK. An anonymous source told The Guardian that apparently the showers are especially dangerous because some of them don’t have locks, and certain individuals have access to them — creating a situation where women and children are being dragged to the toilets at night. Adult nappies are apparently in high demand at the camps, because people, petrified of the risk of sexual violence, are reluctant to use the toilets at night while unaccompanied. Calais camps which had approximately 600 unaccompanied minors became notorious for similar horrors last year, including a case of four teenaged boys who needed surgery after being consistently raped for months.
These appalling conditions are part of the claims of those fighting to convince British Prime Minister Theresa May to reopen the scheme for unaccompanied minors, which would go some way in helping at least a fraction of the 95,000 unaccompanied children in Europe requesting asylum. But in Dunkirk, where a centre intended specifically for women in the refugee camp was burnt down by unknown vandalisers last month, the situation continues to look bleak.