The United Nations asks Spain to protect a 14-year-old minor from Gambia who has been living on the streets for four days

   MADRID, 15 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has asked the Spanish State to adopt "provisional measures" to transfer a 14-year-old boy from Gambia who has been on the street for four days to a child protection center.

According to the Raíces Foundation, the minor, A.A, born in Gambia, is currently 14 years old and arrived in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in August 2023, without family protection, being subsequently transferred by the authorities to the island of Tenerife and, later , successively, to the province of Granada and Barcelona. From there, according to the foundation, they paid for a ticket to Madrid and he was left homeless in October 2023.

According to Raíces, in all these places he was treated as an adult even though he carried a photograph of his passport and his birth certificate. For several months he passed through different entities where only overnight stays were allowed, having to spend the day wandering outdoors and eating in soup kitchens. Thus he survived until an entity referred his case to the NGO Fundación Raíces.

A.A had applied for his passport in Gambia, before migrating, but his issuance was delayed until he was already in Spain. Thus, at the end of 2023 he received his original passport and that same day, accompanied by a lawyer from Fundación Raíces, he went to the Gambian Embassy in Spain, in order to have the aforementioned original passport examined, about which the Embassy certified that " A.A, was born on December 9, 2009 in Fajikunda, Gambia" and "that the passport is valid and authentic."

Immediately afterwards, Fundación Raíces notified agents of the National Police so that the minor was placed at the disposal of the Child Protection Services of the Community of Madrid and that same night, A.A entered a child protection center from the city.

The NGO denounces that, during his stay, A.A has not been enrolled in school at any time, despite the fact that, due to his age (less than 16 years) he has the right to free, compulsory, public education.

On the same day of admission to the juvenile center, Fundación Raíces sent a communication to the Community of Madrid and the Prosecutor's Office informing of the child's admission to the Minor Protection System and of his designation to the foundation's lawyers, stating that it was not It is appropriate to carry out an age determination process because the minor is documented with an original passport.

However, the foundation specifies that, a few weeks later, the Prosecutor's Office summoned the minor to an appearance (without notifying the lawyer), in which the Prosecutor proposed that the minor undergo medical tests to determine his age, warning him that his refusal to submit to them could be interpreted as a revealing sign of his coming of age.

Given the right exercised by the minor not to submit to the tests because he was documented, the Prosecutor requested an expert report from the police on the authenticity of A.A.'s passport, the result of which concluded that there are no signs of falsification in it, despite what which the Prosecutor issued a Decree of Majority due to doubts about the reliability of the data recorded in the passport by the Gambian authorities.

Consequently, the Public Entity for the Protection of Minors of the Community of Madrid has issued a resolution to cease protection and, due to the lack of overnight places for homeless adults, the minor was expelled to the streets last Monday, December 12. February.

A.A., represented by Fundación Raíces, requested the Courts of First Instance of Madrid on February 2 to adopt urgent precautionary measures of protection and, in the absence of a response, on February 8 it asked the UN to intervene.

Now, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has asked the Spanish State, "in order to prevent irreparable harm" to transfer him "to a child protection center while the case is pending examination before the Committee." .

After receiving this communication, Fundación Raíces has urgently forwarded it to the Madrid Prosecutor's Office for the Protection of Minors, to the Child Protection Commission of the Community of Madrid, to the Court of First Instance of Madrid and to the Interministerial Commission of Coordination in Matters of Treaties and other International Agreements, so that each of them adopts the appropriate measures.

Although the adoption of these provisional measures does not mean that the Committee prejudges the substance of the matter in this specific case, Fundación Raíces recalls that the United Nations has already issued 14 Opinions in favor of 14 minors, in which the Committee on Human Rights Niño considers that the age determination procedure in Spain does not have the necessary guarantees to protect the rights of children.

According to the president of Fundación Raíces, Lourdes Reyzábal, "it is alarming that, despite the Government's commitment to modify the age determination procedure in Spain," the necessary legislative reform has not yet been "processed."

"Every day, boys and girls who have become adults continue to be left abandoned on the streets of cities, coincidentally only when these boys and girls are from Africa but, furthermore, only when they are boys and girls who are alone," he added.

Furthermore, he has warned that, currently, there are thousands of children who are in the Canary Islands waiting for correct identification to be protected and hundreds who are in Madrid in adult centers such as Alcalá de Henares or Carabanchel, many of them with documentation proving their minority, but without being protected."