Around two-thirds of the over 3,500 children who have gone missing across Italy so far this year are said to be migrants and are much harder to locate than their Italian counterparts.
Around 30 children are said to go missing every day on average in Italy, with 3,589 children being reported missing so far this year — but just one-third of them are Italian citizens, according to a government report.
The remaining two-thirds are migrants registered as children, with many being people who have come into Italy illegally and absconded from migrant reception centres, the European Union-funded website InfoMigrants reports.
Many missing children have been found since disappearing this year but the rate at which they are found greatly differs based on whether the children are Italian or migrants. Of the missing children found this year, over 70 per cent were Italians.
Elena Bonetti, the Italian Minister for Equal Opportunities and Family, stated the government was working to highlight the issue of missing children and encouraged the public to use an emergency number to report missing children as soon as possible.
Migrant children — and migrants claiming to be children — can go missing because they wish to move to another country entirely, but both can also become victims of human trafficking.
As the vast majority of Ukrainian refugees who have come to Europe since the start of the Russian invasion in February have been women and children, some have expressed concern over the risk of human traffickers taking advantage of the refugees.
In March, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson explicitly warned that traffickers may try and take advantage of such refugees, saying: “There is a huge risk of trafficking in vulnerable children.”
Johansson noted that there was also a sizable number of unaccompanied minors among the Ukrainian refugees, who are at an even greater risk of becoming victims.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.