– The police must investigate and the parents must get a reaction, says head of department at the Children’s Ombudsman Ivar Stokkereit. Employees at the children’s ombudsman have followed news’s cases about children and young people who are left behind involuntarily in Somalia and Kenya by their parents. Some of them end up in purely disciplinary institutions, also called Koran schools, where violence and torture are practiced, according to the Norwegian embassy in Kenya. – For the children this applies to, it is extremely dramatic. And that has some far-reaching consequences that we have to address, says Ivar Stokkereit. – We have to enter into a dialogue with these parents The Children’s Ombudsman believes that action is now needed. The subject manager says the problem of involuntarily left behind children and young people has been a topic for many years, and addressed in several action plans. Without it seeming to have helped. Head of department Ivar Stokkereit at the Children’s Ombudsman believes that parents’ distrust of the Norwegian authorities is part of the problem. Photo: Children’s ombudsman Ivar Stokkereit is keen to stop parents before they send their children. The most important job starts in Norway, he says. – We need to build a more robust and proper system in the municipalities that helps to identify who these children are, much earlier. In such a way that you come into contact with the parents who may be in the process of taking children abroad involuntarily, says Stokkereit. He says that research shows that many of these parents have a great distrust of Norwegian society and support services, such as child protection. – We have to enter into dialogue with these parents, in order to create trust. And also tell the parents how extremely harmful it can be for the child to be left behind, says the Head of Department at the Children’s Ombudsman. news has been given access to reports that the special envoy for integration in Kenya has sent home to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. All the cases concern Norwegian-Somali families. The reports show that the embassy tried to help 86 people who were involuntarily left abroad in 2022. That is twice as many cases as the previous year. In 2023, the number had increased to 99 people who the embassy believed were involuntarily left abroad. – The children and young people who manage to contact us are only the tip of the iceberg, said Sahfana Mubarak Ali last week to news. She is a special envoy for integration at the Norwegian embassy. Sahfana Mubarak Ali is special envoy for integration at the Norwegian embassy in Kenya. Photo: Vegard Tjørhom She told about a young boy she recently met at the embassy, who asked for help to get home to Norway. – He had been sent to a Koranic school, a kind of disciplinary institution, in Somalia. He showed me the scars on his body from the blows he had received. He also had scars on his face. He told about all the atrocities he had been subjected to, it was gross violence. – The police must investigate these cases. news’s sources have also said that it is very difficult to hold parents accountable. news’s survey shows that few parents are investigated and convicted for having left children and young people abroad. Anja Bredal is one of Norway’s leading researchers on violence in close relationships and challenges with integration in Norway. Bredal is critical of the police’s handling of these cases. – It is about priorities and choices. And one can sometimes wonder if these cases are given a lower priority because they are about children with connections to other countries who are not seen as being as “Norwegian” as ethnically Norwegian children, says Bredal. – If such gross violence as we see in some of these cases had happened to children named Ola and Kari, we would have seen a completely different involvement, and we would have had more cases that were investigated and taken to court, Bredal believes. Anja Bredal is a researcher at OsloMet. Photo: NOVA She believes it is a form of unconscious discrimination, that the police and other authorities do not think of them as Norwegian children. Neither the Norwegian Police Directorate nor the Attorney General wanted to comment on the criticism. The Children’s Ombudsman is also concerned that the police must investigate these cases, so parents realize that this is a risk they expose themselves to if they send children out of the country. – The police must investigate these cases and find out what happened. Then there must be a punitive reaction afterwards, in order to send a signal, says Stokkereit, who believes that the politicians must now also be on the field and send a steering signal to the police that this should be a priority. .
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Obvious violation of children’s rights – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
