De luchthaven, een veilige plek voor alleenreizende minderjarigen?

supposedly do not travel alone. Since these minors travel with the assistance of a third
party and this party’s intentions cannot always be shown, this category of minors travelling
alone is also an extremely vulnerable target group.
These three categories consist of both children and adolescents who return from vacation,
a family visit,... and “unaccompanied migrant children”: minors originating from
a country that is not part of the European Economic Area and who are not accompanied
by their parent(s), legal guardian or the latter’s husband/wife 126 . These unaccompanied
migrant children cross the immigration route, the journey from their home
country to the host country, without their parents. Very often, they are accompanied
by another person, although this person’s intentions are not always clear and human
trade and human traffi cking phenomena can have an important impact. Unaccompanied
migrant children are found in each of the three above-mentioned categories of
minors travelling alone.
3. Key results
SUMMARY
This study results in a proper summary of the current legislation and practices with
regard to minors travelling alone who arrive at Brussels Airport. A number of fi eld
observations, as well as experiences abroad enabled us to make an inventory of the
current practices and to identify and recognize diffi culties and anomalies. Hereupon,
the following conclusions were formulated.
Regarding statistics on the group of minors travelling alone, we fi rst have the registration
fi gures of the “Unaccompanied Minors” at our disposal, provided by the airport’s
handling companies. These fi gures indicate that over 20,000 Unaccompanied Minors
arrive with the assistance of the airline at Brussels Airport every year. The number
of assisted minors peaks during holiday periods. With the aim of having statistics
on the two other groups, we had to introduce another registration mechanism at the
level of border control. For this purpose, border control offi cials registered the category
to which the minor belonged and the age and airport of departure of the minor
involved, whenever a minor travelling alone presented himself at the border control.
This analysis reveals that almost an equal number of minors travelling alone was
registered for the three categories. It is advisable, however, to pursue further research
so as to clarify if this division fi ts the reality. A second remarkable observation is that a
very large number of “Minors Third Party” was registered. This confi rms the assumption
that minors are often accompanied during their journey by a third person who is
not their parent or legal guardian. Due to their particularly vulnerable position, it is
not unlikely that they become the victimes of dubious practices by third parties who
126 Law of 24 December 2002 (Belgian Law Gazette 31 December 2002), title XIII, Chapter 6 'Voogdij over nietbegeleide
minderjarige vreemdelingen' (Guardianship to unaccompanied migrant children); Royal Decree of 22
December 2003 (Belgian Law Gazette 29 January 2004).
207