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Calais: Hundreds of children at risk as bulldozers move in

Children in Calais 'Jungle' camp

As bulldozers move to demolish the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp, hundreds of children on their own are at risk.

Many have still not been able to register, meaning they can’t move to the ‘container camp’ – a fenced-off area where they can stay in shipping containers while the ‘Jungle’ is destroyed.

Registration closed at around 12:30pm local time today, but dozens of children were still left outside with nowhere safe to stay – and no further information was given.

Child protection concerns

800 children have been moved to the ‘container camp’ and we’re also concerned about these children, as they’re losing access to the adults and services which supported them in the ‘Jungle’ camp.

Child protection charities haven’t been able to access this new area.

Find out how we’re helping refugees.

A tense situation

Save the Children’s Dorothy Sang, who is at the camp, said: “Refugees and unaccompanied children have been queuing in a calm and orderly way so far, but there’s a huge amount of confusion and lack of information. In the last hour the situation has become increasingly tense.

“There’s a massive police presence here and diggers appear to be moving into the camp now, so it’s potentially very frightening for the children who don’t have a place to stay yet.”

Other staff on the ground say that the situation is becoming volatile – and children need to be moved to a secure area immediately.

Missing children

Our CEO, Kevin Watkins, said: “The French authorities’ demolition of the Calais ‘Jungle’ is being rushed through without due care to protect extremely vulnerable children. This is a dereliction of responsibility which is exposing children to acute risks.

“When a part of the camp was demolished earlier this year, 129 children went missing. We don’t know what happened to them. There’s every chance that this could happen again but on a bigger scale. We’re urging the authorities to halt the demolition until they have registered and are protecting the more than 1,000 children in the camp.”

“We’re really pleased to see a significant number of unaccompanied children from Calais being given a safe haven in the UK, but are deeply concerned for the fate of hundreds of children who remain.”

What we’re doing

Today, we’ve been working with the Refugee Youth Service in Calais to set up information points across the camp, along the path that children should be taking to the registration point.

But with no clear guidance from authorities, it’s unclear where to send children as the bulldozers move in tonight – or what the process will be tomorrow.

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