– The parents rob the children of a safe childhood in Norway, says Sahfana Ali Mubarak. Her job is to help Norwegian children and young people who are involuntarily left behind in Africa. Almost all cases she receives as special envoy for integration at the Norwegian embassy in Kenya have to do with Somalia. And the number of cases is only increasing. She tells 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. It is Sahfana Ali Mubarak’s job to try to help Norwegian children and young people who ask for help. She is special envoy for integration at the Norwegian embassy in Kenya. Photo: Vegard Tjørhom / news Doubling of cases 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. 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, says Mubarak Ali. The explanation for the increase she sees may be increased knowledge and media attention, which causes friends and school back home in Norway to report to a greater extent. Or it could be that the extent of sending children and young people to Somalia is increasing. We don’t know enough about this, says Sahfana Ali Mubarak to news. “The parents are safe in Norway” Both in the reports she sends home and in the interview she gives to news, Sahfana Ali Mubarak is upset on behalf of the children. In one of the reports, she writes that Norwegian children are exposed to neglect and criminal conditions in countries the parents themselves have fled from, while they are safe in Norway. She also writes that we do not have any system to detect neglect of children abroad. Speaking to news, Ali Mubarak points to several reasons why Norwegian-Somali parents make the choice to send children and young people to Somalia. – Some are sent to learn more about language, culture and religion, and parents may think they have become too “Norwegian”, she says. But there can also be more serious conditions behind it, situations where the parents have become desperate: – Often because they feel that the children have ended up in a bad environment, sometimes in a criminal environment. Many of those who are sent have high absenteeism from school, some struggle with substance abuse, says Ali Mubarak. A final group are those who are sent or also travel with one of the parents, are those who are on the run from Norwegian child protection, says Ali Mubarak. She is also unsure of what the parents know about the conditions at some of the schools they send their children to. – But when the parents say that they did not know that the children had been exposed to serious violence and torture at these schools, I think it is a disclaimer of responsibility. Because it is primarily the parents’ responsibility to see that the children are okay. And if they deliberately send the children to Somalia, then they must take responsibility for ensuring that they are not exposed to violence, says Ali Mubarak to news. From a report from the school for a boy who did not show up at the start of school. It turned out that his father had taken him to Somalia. Photo: Terje Haugnes / news – They are chained and whipped with cords She is distraught at how several of the children who ask her for help tell of severe violence at so-called Koranic schools. – The children talk about being exposed to serious violence. These are prison-like conditions. They are chained and whipped with wires. I have heard these descriptions from children and young people, says Ali Mubarak. She says that the children who ask for help often do not want their parents to be notified. They do not want parents to get involved until they are back in Norway, they are afraid that they will then not get home. Many of the children and young people have stayed for many years in Somalia, from five to sometimes 10 years, says Ali Mubarak. Some have almost completely lost the ability to speak Norwegian, she says. These are conditions that news has previously revealed, back in 2017. The revelations led to a lot of attention, and four state leaders promised action to put a stop to sending children on involuntary stays abroad. In 2017, news revealed Koranic schools in Somalia and Somaliland, where Norwegian-Somali children and young people told about whipping and the use of ankle chains. Photo: Esther Bjørneboe / news Now news can reveal that the number of children and young people asking for help is increasing. Norwegian-Somali parents continue to send their children and young people on such stays, primarily in Somalia but also to Kenya and Egypt. Read also: – Locked in, beaten and chained. “Absent fathers with power” There is a preponderance of minors who turn to the embassy for help to get home to Norway. Children are involuntary in Somalia and Kenya, sometimes with their mother or extended family, according to Ali Mubarak. It is difficult to estimate what proportion of the minors stay with extended family and do not have any of their parents present while they are in Somalia, she says. Sahfana Ali Mubarak, in Nairobi, Kenya. She is concerned with the situation of women in these matters. Photo: Vegard Tjørhom / news She is keen to show that the mothers are also often victims here. They are also controlled by absent husbands with power, she writes home in one of the reports. The children often do not know their father, who lives in Norway. In some cases, fathers can refuse to issue passports to children who wish to return to Norway. In order to get a passport for joint children, both parents must consent to it. Father is in Norway, but without a report the police say they have no authority to call him in for questioning, according to Ali Mubarak. And the women often do not want to report the father, because they are afraid of reprisals from the extended family. This is how mothers with children “strand” in Somalia, writes Ali Mubarak, who is concerned with women’s inferior position in some of these cases: “In some cases, father has a wife he is registered married to in Norway with children and a wife in Somalia with several children. The wives are often familiar with the arrangement and accept the situation as it is,” she writes in a report. Four out of ten go to school abroad How many Norwegian-Somali children and young people are involuntarily left abroad is uncertain. Almost four out of ten young people with Somali-born parents, who were themselves born in Norway or came here before they turned 5, state that they have gone to school in a country other than Norway. In all other immigrant groups, the proportion was far lower. This was revealed in the Fafo report “Migration, parenting and social control” from 2019. a report from Oslo Economics, which was presented to the Ministry of Education in January 2020, the consultancy company concluded that at least 415 children have been transported from Norway abroad against their will in the period 2016 – to 2018. news revealed in 2017 Korankols in Somalia and Somaliland. Danish-American Jasmin Osman told news that this is a picture of her in chains at a school in Somaliland. Photo: Jasmin Osman On the run from child welfare news has gained access to several police investigations where child welfare or schools report their suspicion that children have been taken abroad involuntarily. Most cases are dismissed. A boy asks for help to get home to Norway. Photo: Terje Haugnes / news In October 2019, child protection in Drammen municipality asks the police to internationally search for a Norwegian-Somali mother. She is suspected of having taken her seven-year-old daughter to Africa, on the run from child protection. On 4 September that year, the mother had been informed that the County Council had approved the child welfare service for her daughter to live in a foster home. The reason is, among other things, parental violence, according to the child protection service. The father is also not able to provide the girl with good care, as the child protection agency considers it. A picture of the girl is in the police report that news has obtained access to. Photo: Petter Larsson / news About four weeks after the mother learned of the decision to take over care, the mother and the girl disappeared without a trace. The father is distraught, and tries to get hold of them, without success. The police are looking for the mother internationally. They also seize the mother’s bank accounts so they can track her whereabouts if she spends money. From the child protection agency’s report on the girl. Photo: Petter Larsson / news The girl had expressed to the school her fear that she would be taken to Africa, because two younger siblings had been taken by her mother to Africa earlier that year. This is clear from the report to the county council for child protection and social affairs in Buskerud and Vestfold: In the police investigation there is a picture of the girl, who is now 12 years old. The picture was taken on a Norwegian playground. She smiles widely with large spaces between her front teeth. She has two tight braids, and a hoodie with a motif from the TV series “My Little Pony”. The girl and her mother are still wanted, but the case is not being investigated due to their unknown whereabouts abroad, the South-Eastern Police District informs news. news has not succeeded in making contact with the father or mother in this case. – You break the trust of the children very much. Norwegian-Somali parents who send children to stay in Somalia involuntarily often do so in secret, without telling their immediate family about it. It is also shameful in the Norwegian-Somali environment to do so, because it shows that you have no control over your own children, say news’s sources in the environment. It has also been difficult for news to get Norwegian-Somali organizations or resource persons to talk about this. But the organization Tusmo Association, which is based in Bergen and works to achieve better integration of immigrants and Somalis, was willing to talk to news. Tusmo means supervisor in Somali. – When parents choose such a solution, it is often out of desperation, because the children get drunk or are involved in something criminal. At the same time, this is often not a solution that makes things better. You seriously break the trust of the children when you take them out of the country without their consent, against their will. That’s what Sumaya Abdikarim says, she leads the youth group in Tusmo. Sumaya Abdikarim leads the youth group in Tusmo. Photo: Sissel Rikheim / news Kassim Mohamed Adan, chairman of Tusmo, believes there is nothing wrong with sending the children to their home country, in itself. It is when they are sent alone, and are in some form of disciplinary institution such as so-called Koranic schools, he believes it is wrong for parents to send their children. Kassim Mohamed Adan is chairman of Tusmo. Photo: Sissel Rikheim / news They both agree that those who send their children to Somalia, Kenya or Egypt are often the families who are least integrated in Norway. In many cases, there are families where there is a single breadwinner. They both believe that prevention and early intervention is what is needed to stop children and young people being left behind in Somalia. Many of the parents lack knowledge and the right attitudes. We have to work on this, says Kassim Mohamed Adan. – It is important to build trust between families and the aid system, this is where it often fails. The parents need to know that they can go to a place where they can get help and advice, so that they do not choose these drastic solutions, says Sumaya Abdikarim.
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The parents are safe in Norway – sending the children to brutal Koranic schools – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
