Intercontinental trek: Teen refugees on the trail from Central Asia

[gaggedLouise]

This amazing, sad, stark report from a Salvation Army-run refugee shelter in Paris has been on my mind for the last few days. Raises so many questions, so many mixed feelings and thoughts...Some of those kids have literally walked most of the distance from Afghanistan to western Europe, in rain, heat and snow, hungry and sometimes at the peril of getting killed or effectively forced into slavery. The bird's-flight distance from Kabul to Paris is about 5,600 km/3,500 miles, the actual road distance much longer than that, must be at least 7,500 km. The causes of the pressures behind, driving children to take on something like that, or making parents entrust their kids to such a journey, are the stuff of everyday news, but the human cost has rarely been as clear as here. And they arrive in a country that doesn't really see itself having the space for them.

So many questions, I can barely disentangle them...