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The Calais refugee camp
The Calais refugee camp may be demolished as early as this weekend. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
The Calais refugee camp may be demolished as early as this weekend. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

Calais: doubts raised over accuracy of child refugee censuses

This article is more than 7 years old

Children say their names were not taken during official attempts to record underage population of camp before demolition

Concerns have emerged over the accuracy of the first official attempt to find and register child refugees in Calais, just days before the camp is due to be demolished.

Hours after the census was concluded, several children said they had not been asked for their names, and it emerged that two of the main voluntary organisations working with children in the camp were not consulted during the count.

Seventy-two police officers arrived in 17 vans just before 8am on Tuesday. They went through the camp in groups of 12, many armed with truncheons and firearms, and carrying riot helmets and clipboards. They spent three hours visiting every tent, attempting to count each refugee, noting their nationality, and the presence of children, for a census commissioned by the local prefect’s office.

At the same time, more than a dozen workers for the charity France Terre d’Asile (FTDA), which has been contracted by the French and British governments to count the unaccompanied children, made their way through the camp, taking the names of minors.

Shortly after the police census was completed, officers closed the cafe where children receive free meals, and took away one of the volunteers for questioning. Staff at the cafe have been compiling a list of vulnerable minors for the last few weeks. It was not clear whether this list had been handed to officials attempting to register children.

Volunteers at the Refugee Youth Service, where about 80 minors were present on Tuesday, said they had invited FTDA workers in to take names, but they had declined.

Jonny Willis, of the RYS, said he was sceptical about the accuracy of the counts. “It’s ridiculous to try to do a census like this in a place like this in just two days.”

On Monday, the British home secretary, Amber Rudd, acknowledged that she and her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, had a “moral duty to safeguard the welfare of unaccompanied refugee children”, and that hundreds of minors could be given a safe space to live in France or brought to the UK within the next fortnight.

A young boy rides his bicycle outside the cafe in the Calais camp. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

After this commitment, several organisations were trying to collate a definitive list of who needed assistance. But given the fluctuating size and unofficial nature of the camp, finding, counting and registering children was a considerable challenge.

“I haven’t given my name to anyone,” said Omar Khan. “No one has asked me so therefore I have not put my name on any list.” The 16-year-old from Afghanistan has been in the camp for four months. He said he hoped to join friends in Manchester, but had no idea whether he had any chance of going legally, and did not know who to ask.

Omar said he had seen charity employees in blue vests walking around the camp with clipboards. “There was a big crowd around them. No one told me to talk to them.”

Efrem Negusse, 17, from Eritrea, who was waiting outside the closed children’s cafe, said neither he nor his three friends (aged 15, 16 and 16) had registered with the French charity when workers walked through the camp.

“I saw them but none of us put our names down. We didn’t know what they were doing. We didn’t ask them,” Efrem said, resting on crutches after injuring his leg falling from a lorry on which he tried to get to the UK four days ago. “So many people come and try to register us. We don’t know what for. We will wait to see what happens; if there is a chance to go to England, we will.”

As well as the police and the FTDA count, a more detailed survey of the camp’s residents was launched by the charity Help Refugees, aimed at noting residents’ particular needs. Another list, of vulnerable minors who might be eligible for transfer to the UK under the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act, was being made by the UK charity Safe Passage.

Annie Gavrilescu, who was conducting the 10-day census for Help Refugees, said it would be a miracle if FTDA managed to do an accurate count in two days.

The conclusions of the police and the FTDA counts were expected to be made public on Wednesday.

Rudd said UK and French officials had been working together for the last three weeks to find children in Calais who might be eligible to enter the UK under the Dubs amendment, which commits the government to offer sanctuary to some vulnerable refugee children. Volunteers with children’s organisations in Calais said they had not encountered any UK officials.

There was also confusion among camp residents about where they were likely to be sent once the camp was demolished, and an absence of available information.

Refugee children walking among the tents at the camp. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

Etienne Desplanques, the official in the local prefect’s office responsible for the census, said the precise timing of the eviction – which may happen as early as this weekend – would depend on how many people were counted in the camp. Almost 7,000 spaces were available in refugee accommodation centres around France, he said, but if the camp population was higher, the demolition would wait until enough places were available.

Ahmed Essa, 25, a Sudanese farmer who fled the violence more than a year ago, applied for asylum in France in August and is still waiting for the result. “If I don’t have a place to go, I will sleep in the streets, or any place I can.”

Desplanques said he was confident a heightened police presence in Calais after the demolition would be enough to stop a new camp being set up on the same site.

But Calais residents were more cynical about the prospects of a complete demolition. One dismissed the idea as “utopian” and predicted it would simply spread the refugee population across the area and into the city centre. “At least at the moment, there is a clear place where people go; once the camp is demolished people will be back sleeping in doorways. It will be worse for the residents and worse for the refugees,” he said.

Rudd said earlier this week that the UK government would fund safe facilities in France for children potentially eligible to come to the UK in the future, so they no longer had to sleep in tents. However, organisations on the ground said they had no details of where such accommodation would be.

“We are the main service for distributing information and we are not able to do that because we don’t have any information. It’s very frustrating,” Willis said.Omar, who has no family in the UK, said he planned to sleep rough if he was evicted from the camp. “I will sleep on a blanket by the port. I won’t have anywhere special to stay.”

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