Barn utan papper – Barn först och främst

A group that is particularly vulnerable in Sweden are children without documentation and refugee children in hiding. Save the Children Sweden has therefore focused on helping these children through a project called Utanpapper.nu [Withoutpapers.nu], after the Swedish expression “utan papper” (without papers, undocumented), which started in 2005 and aims to give information to children without documentation about their rights. Save the Children Sweden has introduced a website in several languages, a free telephone line and an e-mail address for children and young people who live in Sweden without the proper papers. One important observation that can be made after the first year of this project is that undocumented children are primarily treated as undocumented, and secondarily as children. When they are treated as children first and foremost it is due to the views of individual adults. Among the observations is also that families who are forced to migrate are often at risk of being split up in the process, and that separated children have become undocumented after being denied asylum.