She immigrated alone.. Italy returns the Tunisian girl to her country

The Ministry of Family, Women, Childhood and the Elderly in Tunisia announced that the General Delegate for Childhood Protection will receive the four-year-old girl who arrived on Italian soil in an irregular immigration process on the 21st of last October, after a few days, after the Italian judiciary ruled to return her to her country and hand her over to her family. .

The Tunisian authorities had previously prevented the family of the small clandestine immigrant from joining Italy and initiated legal and diplomatic procedures to retrieve her, which they said was in their best interests.

It is noteworthy that the four-year-old girl, Linda, arrived alone on the Italian island of Lampedusa on one of the secret immigration boats and was placed by the Italian authorities in a shelter center and gained wide solidarity from civil society organizations in Italy, which initially prompted the Italian authorities to refuse Return the child and insist on the presence of her parents.

The political activist and former member of Parliament residing in Italy, Majdi al-Karbaei, said in statements to “TnT Universal Tv” that the Italian authorities had adopted a report provided by the Tunisian authorities regarding the social status of the immigrant girl’s family, and that he had contacted her family and made sure that he had refurnished and maintained their house before submitting a file. The case, commenting that the political authorities in Tunisia went down with all their weight to return the child.

Al-Karbaei added, “The Italian authorities enabled the girl to communicate via phone calls with her parents throughout the month that she spent in the shelter, and that the Italian judiciary was looking into the possibility of the family joining the girl because this was what was done in similar situations, but the political intervention and the refusal of the Tunisian authorities prompted the decision to return her.” to her country.”

For his part, the spokesperson for the Forum for Economic and Social Rights, which is considered one of the civil society organizations most interested in the file of irregular migration, Ramadan Ben Omar, commented that the best interest of the girl is to live with her parents on Tunisian or Italian lands, explaining that the Tunisian authorities have provided guarantees and pledges for her to live. The girl and her family are in the best conditions.

Ben Omar commented in his interview with the website: “We hope that the authorities will pay the same attention to all the situations of minor immigrants who throw themselves into death boats, and that they will move proactively to stop the bleeding of irregular migration.”

The sociologist, Fouad Al-Gharabali, confirmed that the migrant child needs psychological care, especially after she experienced psychological trauma at sea during the migration journey and her separation from her family. He pointed out that the Tunisian state considered the issue a sovereign matter and pressed to return the child, while Italy presented a message that it does not engage in the logic of encouraging irregular migration and involving children in immigration.

The sociologist called for the necessity of presenting the immigration file in greater depth and addressing it within the framework of a general policy of the state and negotiating with the European Union to find solutions that guarantee people’s right to movement and stop the bleeding of young people’s death at sea by developing alternative solutions so that Tunisia is not just a guard of European borders and presents its point of view. in order to solve the crisis.

It is worth noting that Tunisia is witnessing an increase in the number of irregular migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea towards the European dream, especially in the summer months, coinciding with the improvement of weather conditions.

And official statistics in the country monitored the crossing of more than 20,000 irregular migrants in 2021, including 10,000 foreigners, most of them from sub-Saharan African countries.

The statistics of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights also showed that 2,635 minors, including 1,832 without a family accompaniment, were able, from the beginning of 2022 until August, to reach the Italian coasts on irregular migration trips.