Across Europe, thousands of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UAMs) are living in unsafe, precarious conditions—held in detention-like facilities, left in homelessness, or forced into exploitative situations. Those children who do receive proper care are typically unprepared for turning eighteen, when they are left to fend for themselves. While headlines often focus on numbers or border policies, these children and young people are not statistics. They are individuals—many fleeing war, persecution, and economic collapse—who have a legal right to protection but are met instead with indifference or hostility.

Greece, at the edge of Europe’s border regime, is a striking example. A country that receives disproportionate numbers of asylum seekers, it continues to struggle with a fractured protection system. Despite efforts such as the National Guardianship System and the “Network of Care” initiative by UNICEF, thousands of UAMs remain without proper accommodation, guardianship, or access to education and mental health support. Many are forced to sleep rough, survive in squats, or rely on unsafe networks to meet basic needs.

Instead of offering sanctuary, Greece has increasingly criminalised migration. Children are caught in mass arrests, detained without legal justification, and subjected to inhumane conditions. The Guardian recently reported on teenage refugees imprisoned after being forced to steer boats—coerced by smugglers, and then prosecuted as smugglers. These prosecutions contravene the UN protocol on migrant smuggling, which establishes that a migrant cannot be prosecuted for facilitating his or her own smuggling.

Yet this isn’t just about Greece. Across the EU, child protection is often subordinated to border enforcement. Italy and Bulgaria continue to push children back violently from borders. In northern Europe, children are housed in isolated, overcrowded facilities with minimal support. Even in states with stronger welfare systems, like France or the Netherlands, children face lengthy asylum delays, housing shortages, and racism.

Meanwhile, EU member states continue to fund violent border policies and offshore processing, instead of investing in systems that safeguard children’s rights. The failure to equitably share responsibility across Europe—leaving border states overwhelmed—is political, not inevitable. A rights-based approach is possible. It requires redistributing responsibility, ending detention of children, and ensuring legal pathways for reunification and protection.

Projects like HELIOS Junior in Greece offer a glimpse of what a better system could look like: focusing on integration, education, and social inclusion or those ‘ageing-out’ of the supports and protections they are entitled to as children. But they are underfunded and far from the norm. Civil society groups and local communities often step in to fill the gaps—offering language classes, safe spaces, and legal aid—but they cannot substitute for state responsibility.

We must move away from a policy framework that views refugee children and young people as a “burden” to be managed. They are not a threat, they are part of our shared future. Europe’s commitment to human rights means little if it abandons the most vulnerable at its borders.

Instead of walls and criminalisation, we need care, solidarity, and structural change. A Europe that truly upholds its values would ensure every child and young person—regardless of origin—is safe, supported, and free to thrive.