VULNERABILITY OF UNACCOMPANIED FOREIGN MINORS AND LIMITS OF EXISTING PROTECTIONS

In Italy the need to guarantee the best interests of the minor has extended to unaccompanied foreign minors, with law 47/2017. The legal recognition reserved for minors, and not all migrants, is based on the condition of their greater vulnerability. The objective was to recognize the same rights as European Union children: the right to listening, to health, to education, and in particular, the right to grow up and be educated within a family, possibly his own. But, the law l132/2018 which, due to security needs, has introduced regulations aimed at restricting the reception and subsequent integration measures. The Covid-19 pandemic has further accentuated the numerous problems affecting unaccompanied foreign minors. The risk is, however, that those minors who come to Italy, in an objectively vulnerable condition, remain inadequately protected, in contrast with the international and European regulations that guarantee the best interest of the child.