Some 11,000 unaccompanied
minors have landed on Italy's shores as refugees this year, the
national association of Italian city councils (ANCI) told the
House Constitutional affairs committee on Wednesday.
"That's 3,000 more than the average influx over the past 10
years," ANCI representative Camilla Orlandi told MPs examining a
bill on protective measures for foreign unaccompanied minors.
"We've been waiting for this measure for a while," Orlandi
said, adding that Italy lacks a national foreign child
protection agency.
The bill would allocate significant funding to set up such
an agency, which would take charge of the minors from when they
first arrive to when they are assigned to more long-term
placement.
Also on Tuesday, 877 migrants from several African
countries disembarked from an Italian Navy ship after they were
rescued off various vessels in distress as part of Italy's Mare
Nostrum (Our Sea) migrant search-and-rescue mission.
They came from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Nigeria,
Senegal, Somalia, Sudan and Syria, officials said.
They included more than 150 minors, 117 of them
unaccompanied, authorities said as they scrambled to place them
in group homes and other facilities in the Campania region.
"We have found permanent places for more than 40 of these
kids so far," explained Naples welfare councilwoman Roberta
Gaeta, adding that the Red Cross has said it will take in
another 70 kids on a temporary basis.
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