The Spanish and Canarian governments have been taken to task by the country’s Supreme Court over their failure to resolve the plight of child migrants currently cared for in the Islands.
The two have been embroiled in a bitter dispute over provision for thousands of unaccompanied minors from Africa who have arrived in the Canaries in recent years.
A ruling by the court back in March confirmed the Canaries’ long-held view that the matter is a state responsibility and Spain must adopt the appropriate measures to look after the young migrants, who cannot be returned to their countries of origin due to their age and must be granted formal protection under international conventions.
The human and financial resources required to look after them are placing a massive strain on the Canarian authorities, who appeared to have reached a deal with Madrid for the transfer of a significant number to the mainland for onward distribution to other parts of the country.
However, in what has increasingly become an embarrassing political football, virtually no progress has been made to implement the agreement, with a number of regions openly refusing to shoulder their share of the unaccompanied migrants.
A hearing in the Supreme Court at the end of May saw the Spanish and Canarian governments reportedly blame each other for the failure to resolve the situation. Madrid has accused the regional authorities here of not providing the information it needs to grant asylum recognition to almost one thousand youngsters as a key step in the process.
In a hard-hitting communiqué issued yesterday, three Supreme Court judges ordered both governments to prepare and submit to the Court “a detailed joint report” every two weeks on the steps taken to implement its earlier ruling and arrange for the transfer of over a first large group of young Africans to facilities on the mainland.
The unequivocal instruction comes less than a week before an EU body – the Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External Affairs of the Committee of the Regions (COR) – visits Santa Cruz de Tenerife for a conference hosted by Canarian president Fernando Clavijo that will explore the situation of unaccompanied minor migrants. As part of the conference, members will carry out a fact-finding visit to two centres used to accommodate the mostly young males.
