"Oxfam staff and partners recount cases where border guards have cut the soles off the shoes of child migrants or stolen their phone SIM cards. In one case, a very young Eritrean girl was forced to walk back across the border along a road with no pavement carrying her 40-day-old baby," the Oxfam report published on Thursday read.
READ MORE: Italy to Pursue Hardline Migration Policy Despite Standoff With France — Lega
The charity added that at least 16,500 migrants, a quarter of which are children, crossed the Italian-French border near the Italian town of Ventimiglia during the last nine months. Staying for months and years in reception centers, migrant children have no opportunity to attend school, reunite with their family members or gain information about how to claim asylum, the charity said.
Earlier this week, several Italian charities accused French border police of falsifying young migrants' birth dates in order to send them back to Italy. Under the Dublin Regulation, minor asylum seekers can not be sent back to Italy if they request to stay in France, while adult refugees can only claim asylum in the first European country they arrive in.
The report came a day after a French-Italian standoff, when French President Emmanuel Macron slammed Italy for its decision to deny entry to the Aquarius, which carried over 600 migrants saved in the Mediterranean. The criticism sparked strong objections from Rome, which repeatedly said that Italy is not to be turned into Europe's "refugee camp" while the neighboring countries close borders and defend their frontiers with weapons.
