Seeking a better future

Seeking a better future

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Mass deaths among those trying to reach Europe’s southern shores on overloaded vessels from North Africa have shocked Europe. In late April the first bodies were brought ashore in the deadliest shipwreck of its sort in modern times.

Migrants reaching Italy by sea this year are set to top last year's record of 170,000, the International Organisation for Migration estimates. Minors are prominent among them, with underage arrivals to Italy tripling in 2014 from the previous year.

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
Adolescent migrants Mustafa (second right) from Gambia and Ishmael (right) from Sierra Leone stand in a courtyard at an immigration centre in Caltagirone.

Sixteen-year-old orphan Ishmael Bangura (right) fled Sierra Leone in July when the Ebola virus killed eight members of his household. On his way to Italy from Libya months later, his boat capsized. He survived by clinging to a rope lowered from a rescue vessel while dozens drowned in the sea below him.

Today Bangura lives in a shelter. He is part of a growing army of parentless child migrants that are washing up on Europe's shores, giving the continent's immigration crisis a tragic new face.

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
An adolescent migrant stands in his bedroom at an immigration centre in Caltagirone.

Italy, by law, cannot repatriate minors and is required to provide healthcare and schooling. Host countries are already under strain. In Italy, 13,000 teenagers -- mostly young men fleeing conflict, poverty or persecution -- now live in Italian immigration centres.

The numbers are expected to rise because of the world's demographic boom. There are more 10-to 24-year-olds now than at any other time in human history, mostly living in poor countries, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Faced with this prospect, Italy is trying to introduce a long-term system to shelter and integrate future minors. The country is tapping European Union funds to open up new shelters to be monitored by humanitarian groups that seek to help integrate the youngsters.

There is resistance. Some right-wing politicians, particularly in the wealthy north of Italy, are pushing back against opening shelters in their regions. Lombardy and Veneto, northern regions that are governed by the anti-immigration Northern League, said this month that they would not accept any new migrants.

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
A sketch is stuck on the wall of a room where adolescent migrants from Egypt sleep at an immigration centre in Caltagirone.

The rise in migrants in the Mediterranean this year is largely the result of political instability in Somalia and Eritrea and the recent breakdown of order in Libya, in addition to the civil war in Syria.

Italy separates unaccompanied minors from adults in its shelters. But many of the shelters for younger migrants have lacked specialised staff, including interpreters or Italian teachers. They have provided little more than a bed, a meal and some cheap clothes.

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

After staying in the "first shelter", the minors are due to go to a "community" of 12 children where they enrol in school and participate in activities including soccer. Italian courts assign guardians to the children, who are legally required to stay in the communities until they are 18.

"We are building the future of our country because we have before us a mix of peoples who now live here, who want to live here, and who want to contribute," said Daniele Cutugno (centre), a psychologist who runs the shelter where Bangura lives.

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

The shelter where Bangura and 55 other African boys live is on the outskirts of Caltagirone, a city of fewer than 40,000 known for its ceramic industry. It is a refurbished, two-storey stone villa with sprawling grounds.

Most of the boys there did not plan to come to Italy, and each has his own tragic reason for seeking out a future far from home at an age when many teenagers in the West are occupied with exams, video games and driving lessons.

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

Bangura said that when he reached Libya, he was kidnapped for two weeks, while his captor tried to extort a ransom from purported relatives. He was then sent to jail, before being put on a boat to Italy. Bangura said he now fasts, prays and waits.

"I didn't know anything about Italy before coming. Now I want to spend my life here. I'm here for help. Whatever the Italians do I'll be patient until they can help me."

. CALTAGIRONE, ITALY. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi