Italy presented this Thursday a new diploma on immigration focused on minors, who will now be able to be temporarily housed in adult facilities and will be subject to medical examinations to determine their age.
According to a draft decree approved this afternoon by the Council of Ministers, unaccompanied minors over 16 years of age may be accommodated for a maximum period of 90 days in spaces reserved in reception centers intended for adults.
This bill must still be approved by Parliament, where the ultra-conservative government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has an absolute majority.
A “worrying” provision, considered this Thursday the spokesperson for Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund) in Italy, Andrea Iacomini.
“We can’t put them with adults,” he said.
Normally, unaccompanied minors, mothers with children and pregnant women are accommodated in reception centers equipped with social and health services aimed at integration, where they can benefit from language classes and vocational training.
Meloni defended this change in immigration legislation, arguing that now all women, including those who are not pregnant or do not have children, will be sent to these centers.
But the new diploma is aimed primarily at young immigrants who claim to be under 18 years old to avoid expulsion.
The decree authorizes “anthropometric measurements” and medical examinations, including x-rays, to determine your age.
“With these new rules, it will no longer be possible to lie about your true age,” warned Giorgia Meloni on the social network Facebook.
In fact, these exams have been authorized since 2017, along with other non-medical methods of age verification.
“In practice, this does not change anything,” stressed the UNICEF spokesperson, recalling that many minors arrive in Italy from countries where it is impossible to determine their age from civil registry documents.
The Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, warned on Wednesday afternoon, after the Council of Ministers, that if the authorities conclude that a young migrant who claims to be a minor is of legal age, he runs the risk of being deported.
Verifying age through medical examinations is very controversial.
“There is currently no procedure that allows age to be estimated accurately, and all methods have a significant margin of error,” according to the Council of Europe.
“It is unacceptable to assess the age of a child based solely on the results of medical examinations, and margins of error must be applied to the benefit of the person concerned,” the Council of Europe defended in a 2019 report.
Meloni came to power in 2022 with a promise to stop illegal immigration, but the number of immigrants and refugees arriving on Italian territory since the beginning of this year is the highest in the last seven years, and the far-right leader acknowledged this week that I hoped to “do better.”
Source: TSF
