“The body of a man is very small compared with the spirit that inhabits him.”

African oral tradition

These children’s situation reaches such a level of desperation that they actually risk their lives embarking on dangerous journeys in an attempt to escape. Managing to drift their way to Morocco’s borders they scramble hidden onto cargo ships or crowded on to unsafe pateras. In fact 80% of runaways who attempt to board these hazardous and overcrowded boats daily are unaccompanied young children. In Tangiers children try and hide on the back of trucks or hang dangerously on the bottom of chassis. It is not surprising that thousands of these children do not make it alive. There have been unofficial reports that estimate up to a thousand bodies a year are washed up on Spanish shores, whilst refrigerated lorries have been opened upon destination to find the bodies of children frozen.

There are however numerous youngsters who manage to make it across the boarders. Many have made it to the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla where they then try and find a way to journey to mainland Spain.  Some like Ismael ... read more...

Unbelievably many of these young runaways have made it as far as Madrid and Barcelona whilst others have even made it all the way to Italy and France.

Sadly many children who make these terrifying journeys end up dead. Those that do manage to survive only end up worst off than before. They become lost, living the same street life but with more fear. They sleep and beg on the streets of a country where they don’t even speak the language. They completely lose any identity they once had…they become orphaned in a foreign land.