Rome (NEV), April 11, 2017 – “A step in the right direction. A helping hand to children’s rights and to reception policies”. Paolo Naso, coordinator of Mediterranean Hope – Refugees and Migrants program of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy (FCEI), is positive about the law approved on March 29 by the Italian Parliament regarding protection of unaccompanied minor migrants. “The law had been floating for years in Parliament – continues Naso, who is also professor of Political Science at the ‘La Sapienza’ University of Rome – and it is important that it came at the very moment in which the number of unaccompanied minors arriving in Italy is increasing. With this decision the Parliament takes a courageous step and sends out a message to Europe. At the same time we cannot ignore that very often children arrive in terrible conditions, worn out by a journey at the mercy of criminal traffickers and more and more often after having been exploited and sold as goods. News of other deaths at sea, many of whom presumably minors, are reaching us in these very days. It is for this reason – underlines Naso – that we want to re-launch our campaign in favor of the ‘humanitarian corridors’ thanks to which the Federation of Protestant churches in Italy, the Waldensian Church and the Community of St. Egidio, safely brought to Italy about 700 vulnerable persons, thanks with a regular visa for humanitarian reasons”.
