Future uncertain for child migrants living in French camp set to be dismantled

Migrants walk through the Jungle camp on Sunday.

(Image credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

last updated 24 October 2016

On Monday, the French government will begin demolishing a makeshift migrant camp near Calais called the "Jungle," and aid workers say there's no plan for the more than 1,300 unaccompanied children living there.

The minors have come from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and other countries, and many want to emigrate to Britain; while Britain is prioritizing children who have family already in the U.K., it is still negotiating with France where to send the kids that don't have ties to either country. "All this should have been done a long time ago," Francois Guennoc from the charity Auberge des Migrants told Reuters.

The camp is filthy with poor sanitation and makeshift living quarters, and the French government said it is being destroyed on humanitarian grounds. France wants to resettle the migrants in centers across the country while their asylum requests are being reviewed, and aid workers believe hundreds could refuse to go along with this plan; the government has said it will arrest those who won't leave the Jungle. Ali Ahmed, 24, from Sudan, told Reuters he eventually wants to end up in Britain, and he'll stay in the camp for the time being. "I have seen worse than this," he said. "And prison wouldn't be so very different from the Jungle."