From Egypt to Friuli, the little brothers meet again after many dangers

The journey of twelve-year-old Mohamed (who is clearly not called that) to hug his brother Ahmed (another fictitious name) was long and full of obstacles…

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The journey of twelve-year-old Mohamed (who is clearly not called that) to hug his brother Ahmed (another fictitious name), 16, who had already been welcomed into a community for foreign minors in the province of Udine, was long and full of obstacles. . From Egypt to Friuli, passing through a detention facility in Libya and a large center in Calabria, up to that hug at the station in Florence, which arrived after “almost two months” of bureaucracy and contacts. The story is told by those who have firmly sought that reunion.
THE STORY
They reported that the two brothers left “as a relay”, helped by their family. But 12-year-old Mohamed, who had started his journey a few months after Ahmed, was stuck in Libya, «in a detention center – as the president of Oikos Ets Giovanni Tonutti says -, from which he then escaped and reached Calabria, where he was taken to a facility with children serving alternative measures to prison.” But the distance was too much for a twelve-year-old alone, without his family. «Mohamed sent his brother videos every day in which he cried like a fountain. Brother Ahmed was desperate and so we took action until we reached the Prefecture responsible for that territory and managed to obtain a transfer for reunification”, says Tonutti. And, finally, after a complex bureaucratic process, the undertaking was successful. The educator of the Friulian community of Oikos where Ahmed is welcomed – as the NGO reports – would also have gone to Calabria to pick up the boy, but the coordinator of the Calabrian community offered to take Mohamed by train to Florence. And there, after months, in March, as Tonutti says, the brothers finally embraced each other again, with a smile and an emotion that also shines through in the photo that portrays them together: the sixteen-year-old with the curly mop of hair cut in the fashion that wraps around him, protective , the twelve-year-old with a quick gab, who, among the many questions he asked in rapid succession, also had one about supermarkets in Friuli. He wanted to know if he could find the candy there. Now they both live in an Oikos community for minors in the province of Udine, where the fee requested by Mohammed from the institution of origin, Tonutti specifies, is «around 50 euros. We didn’t pay attention to the tuition for the minor or the risk that they won’t even pay us, given that they told us that they are about a year behind on payments. We did it to reunite. These are things that we allow ourselves to do once in a while, in extraordinary cases.”
THE PHENOMENON
The phenomenon of foreign “super-minors” “even under 12 years old” arriving in Friuli, confirms Tonutti, “is on the increase”, in the province of Udine, but also, for example, “in Trieste”. In another Oikos community, authorized for children between 11 and 14 years old (Mohamed, in fact, is in the other center for older children, only because he is accompanied by his sixteen-year-old brother), which «welcomes foreigners, but also victims of violence undergone or assisted, with a maximum capacity of 12 children and about ten operators”, there are two other foreign twelve-year-olds. «An Albanian boy entrusted by the Municipality of Tarvisio and an Egyptian child», recently arrived from Udine, where he was traced. For your reception, from 1 June to 12 January 2025, Palazzo D’Aronco has arranged a payment of 33,888.70 euros (149.95 euros per day for 226 days). A substantial sum, but, Tonutti specifies, the fee of 149.90 euros, for such delicate structures and with so few places, is necessary to be able to cover the costs: «We must guarantee a number of operators appropriate to the age of the children and to the maximum capacity of the structure, which is 12 places. Now we have five children welcomed, so there are six operators involved. They are children with considerable suffering. Therefore, in addition to the work of educators, we must resort to constant psychological support. The relationship with social workers is continuous.” The twelve-year-old tracked down in Udine on March 27th has already settled in. «He colored a lot of pictures of toy cars, which we hung in all our offices».

Read the full article at
The Gazzettino

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