Danger on Land and Sea: A Conversation with RefugePoint’s Child Protection Expert in Tunis

Boat crossings to Europe from North Africa are attempted by tens of thousands of asylum seekers each year from across Africa and the Middle East. This is one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world: the IOM reports that 2,452 lives were claimed in attempted boat crossings in 2024. Tunisia has consistently been one of the most common departure points, and the Tunisian coast guard intercepts hundreds of boats each year.

People fleeing wars and violence across the African continent make their way to Tunisia to attempt this dangerous crossing, including thousands of unaccompanied children. UNHCR estimates that 45,000 refugees and asylum seekers are in Tunisia, and as of March 2025, 10,683 were registered with UNHCR. Of this number, 1,890 are children.

In 2024, RefugePoint sent a Child Protection Expert named Aaron from Kenya to the UNHCR mission in the capital city of Tunisia. In November 2024, RefugePoint’s Manager of Philanthropic Partnerships, Jenna Hornsby, had the opportunity to visit Aaron and learn about his work.

Could you tell me a bit about the children UNHCR is protecting and the situations they are facing?

Aaron: Almost all of the children who are here are unaccompanied. These are unaccompanied refugee children who have been registered, undergone asylum procedures, and some have been granted refugee status by UNHCR. And now UNHCR is trying to find solutions for these children through resettlement. So, for them to proceed with resettlement, we must conduct Best Interests Determinations (BIDs).

Related: A Day in the Life: RefugePoint’s Child Protection Expert in Bangkok, Thailand

Ideally, would you want these unaccompanied children reunited with a family member in a safe country, when possible?

Aaron: Yes, the ideal situation is that if we have children who have families, let’s say in Europe or in countries that are safer, the best thing to do is family reunification. However, UNHCR needs to have certain agreements and mechanisms in place with the receiving government for this process or repatriation to be viable, which presents an impediment to some of these cases. They also need to be apprised of the security situation in such countries. Tunisia does not have any asylum or local integration framework, so the option available to most children we work with is resettlement.

Most of the cases in Tunisia are children from Sudan, Eritrea, South Sudan or Cameroon. Before considering resettlement, we have safeguards to ensure that if they have family back in, let’s say, Cameroon or another country of origin, we seek to establish those relations. Legally, that’s the first option. But most are purely unaccompanied, and sometimes we cannot establish their families, because there are some countries where we cannot do tracing.

What inspires you most about your work?
Aaron: What inspires me most is the kind of support the clients get in finding durable solutions and lasting solutions to most of their problems and the challenges they go through.

What does a typical day look like for you?
Aaron: I wake up, you know, like any other person. Then I prepare for the day based on the plans that I had the other day.

Before, when I worked in a refugee camp, I would wake up in the morning and then head straight up to the camp. In Tunis, the situation is quite different because most of the children here live in shelters. So we visit them.

At the office, I go through the BIDs that have been submitted. I work on strategies because we are trying to have a working child protection unit in Tunisia. So I am thinking through what we can really introduce that would make our work more feasible in terms of children accessing services. I then train our teams to implement them.

I also participate in BID review panels, which include case discussions with the government. The caseworker presents the case, and I make sure that we are doing the correct procedure in terms of the BID, having a proper review of the child’s best interests.

Where do the unaccompanied children in Tunisia come from?
Aaron: There are 52 nationalities here – almost all of Africa. Mostly from Sudan. Also many from Eritrea, Cameroon, South Sudan, and Somalia.

I know people leave from Tunisia on dangerous boat journeys to Europe. Is that the other option facing the children that you’re working with? Do they come here trying to cross the sea?

Aaron: Yes, most of the kids that we respond to here want to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Most of them have already tried and were rescued by the Tunisian coast guard.

I interviewed one child in the south with a very sad story – she said she was one of 117 people in one boat, and it capsized. She was one of only 17 that were rescued—the rest drowned.

There’s a highly connected smuggling network, and most of the children have made multiple journeys. Some come from Chad to Libya, and then Libya adopted restrictions, so they cross on foot to Algeria. And then from Algeria to Tunisia. The smugglers are charging around $8,000 USD, and if you cannot pay, you are put in a warehouse. Many of the girls are repeatedly raped.

Could you tell me a story that might help people understand the impact of your work?
Aaron: I will tell you a story from one of the three cases that I received, which were pending from 2021, which I was finally able to resolve.

The client was a boy of mixed nationality. He was born in West Africa to parents of different nationalities. But the mother passed away when he was seven or eight years old. She had told him he had a father, but that the father lived in another country. When the mother died, her friend called the child’s father to come and retrieve him. But when the child arrived in a new country with his father, his stepmother was not very receptive and didn’t want to take care of another child. So she didn’t let him play with her children and discriminated against him.

One day, they woke up, and she brought him out and handed him off to a man he didn’t know. She had arranged for him to be sold, and the man brought him and dropped him at the Tunisian border. This is how he came to live in Tunis.

The boy doesn’t remember the name of his father—he just calls him daddy—nor the stepmother. He does know the names of his half-siblings in Cameroon, but after their mother died, they were taken by their father. So he was just a boy alone in the world.

For me, this was one of the cases that made me feel like I really did something. I completed the BID process, so he is being considered for resettlement. Even if I leave Tunis today, I’ll just pray that he finds closure and support wherever he’s going. And that in the future, he’s going to remember where he’s come from, and he’s able to have an impact on other people. So, that’s what I hope, too.

Sometimes when we do case management or the BID procedures, I hope that the support this child is getting from Refuge Point and UNHCR, is going to reflect on his life going forward. That it will be these people who will, in the future, shape how assistance is provided to vulnerable people. He might offer a hand here and there. And I hope they remember one day. I’m sure they do.