Unaccompanied and Separated Migrant Children in Southern Africa

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) published a report entitled ‘Study On Unaccompanied Migrant Children In Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia And Zimbabwe’ in September 2017. Click the image below for the report.

The report focuses on unaccompanied and separated migrant children (USMC), mostly placed in care, in the four SADC countries. Data analysis from surveys and interviews on USMC informs recommendations, which are made for each country involved in the study.

The South African component of the report looks at Gauteng and Limpopo and was designed, implemented and analysied by Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town.

This study acknowledges and uses the same model as the research conducted by Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town in 2015 (Foreign Children in Care in the Western Cape Province), which looked at all USMC who were placed in Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCC) in the Western Cape.

The report by IOM (the South African part written by Marilize Ackermann) analyzed surveys that were conducted with UASM placed in care across the Gauteng and Limpopo regions. The surveys in Gauteng were collected by The Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town and Ms Jill Stein jointly and 26 CYCCs were visited as part of the research. In the Limpopo region, the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town conducted all surveys with USMC placed in care. Ten CYCCs participated in the Limpopo region.