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The number of unaccompanied child refugees arriving in the Netherlands has reached a five year high, the AD reported on Tuesday, quoting figures from the refugee settlement agency COA.
By September 1, 665 minors were in the care of child refugee agency Nidos, double the figure for last last year and heading for the 2016 record of 967, the AD said. Almost 40% of them come from Syria.
On Sunday, railway workers found one 13-year-old boy alone at Tilburg station. He is thought to have travelled alone. A 10-year-old Syrian girl was found in Utrecht’s railway station earlier this summer.
Last year, it emerged that over 2,500 children have disappeared from refugee centres in the Netherlands over the past 10 years and no-one knows where most of them are.
While some of the under-18s will have travelled on to find family in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, a proportion will have ended up in the hands of human traffickers or in prostitution, refugee agency COA said at the time.
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Source: Dutch News
