Growing Up ‘Non-Western’ in Denmark’s Nanny State

Fatema Abdol-Hamid’s son was 11 months old when the municipality informed her that he must be in day care by his first birthday. Because he was born premature and was still small for his age, Abdol-Hamid wanted to keep her son home until he started walking. She pictured him at the day care, unable to reach a toy or get around without help, and didn’t like the image. With her husband running a Syrian restaurant and Abdol-Hamid studying for a bachelor’s degree, she felt there was no rush to send him off. 

The Danish state, however, disagreed. Abdol-Hamid, a Danish-born citizen whose Palestinian parents immigrated here before she was born, lives with her family in Vollsmose, which is Denmark’s largest “ghetto,” an official label for low-income minority neighborhoods. As a resident of Vollsmose, the government deemed that her son was at risk of speaking inadequate Danish and doing poorly in school. Since 2019, all families in the so-called ghettos have been required to send their kids to day care when they turn 1 or risk losing public benefits, in a bid to teach them the “traditions, norms and values that we emphasize in this country.” 

The Danish government also argues that children from these areas who skip day care are more likely to start school behind on language skills, putting them at risk of poorer educational and labor outcomes. Before the law took effect, 69% of 1-to-2-year-olds with parents who immigrated from non-Western countries were in day care, compared with 93% among children with Danish ancestry. In “vulnerable” neighborhoods, where a mix of white Danes, immigrants and their descendants live, 75% of 1-year-olds were enrolled in day care. 

Back in Vollsmose – which is in Odense, Denmark’s third-largest city – Abdol–Hamid discovered the “traditions, norms and values” her son needed to learn when she applied for an exemption to the day care rule and a municipal social worker came to inspect the family home. Seeming sympathetic, the visitor ticked through a list of required questions, including how Abdol-Hamid would ensure gender equity among her kids (she only had one at the time), how she would teach him about democracy and how she would introduce him to Christmas — a question Abdol-Hamid, who is Muslim, did not quite know how to answer. 

“It was very not scary, but like, ‘Who do you think you are, coming to my house and teaching me how to be with my child, only because I live in Vollsmose?” says Abdol-Hamid, now 26 and a mother of two. “I think it was very absurd. But I was like, I just have to finish this conversation, 

I have to just reach my goal” all she wanted was for her son to avoid going to day care, and for the government not to remove her cash benefits. 

The social worker expressed some concerns about her husband’s Danish language skills – he arrived as a political refugee from Syria about eight years ago, and while Abdol-Hamid says his Danish is excellent, he hasn’t yet taken a required language exam — but they got the exemption, though they couldn’t apply for extra money to watch their child at home, as families living outside ghetto areas can. Abdol-Hamid’s son started day care six months later, once he started walking; today, he’s almost 5 years old and his Danish is better than his Arabic. 

The day care policy is one of Denmark’s controversial ghetto laws, which passed in 2018 with broad support from the mainstream political parties. Every year, the government takes stock of neighborhoods with at least 1,000 residents; to qualify as a “vulnerable residential area,” an area must meet two of four criteria covering the levels of residents’ education, unemployment, income and criminal convictions. But if an area meets the criteria and more than half of residents are of non-Western descent, it will be deemed a ghetto, or, since the center-left government rebranded the law in 2021, a “parallel society.” 

The ghetto label can be a stamp of death for a neighborhood. Ghettos are subject to a host of targeted policies to break up ethnic enclaves through housing demolitions and redevelopment, forced evictions and higher penalties for crimes committed in the area. Parents must also, as Abdol-Hamid discovered, send their children to day care. However, annual enrollment at day cares in ghettos is capped at 30% for children from the neighborhood. This means that if 30% of the children at the day care closest to home are from a ghetto, the parents must send their children to a facility that has a smaller percentage of children from their neighborhood. The state has allocated $1.45 billion through 2026 to implement the law, with the goal of changing the ethnic and economic composition of ghetto neighborhoods by 2030. 

The Danish government says these measures are needed to address “deep-rooted social and integrational challenges,” that is, a concern that non-Westerners don’t embrace Danish culture or speak the language well enough, despite benefiting from the country’s generous social welfare systems. Opponents of the laws say they undermine the social fabric of immigrant and second-generation neighborhoods, representing, as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in 2018, “coercive assimilation.” 

“Although there are trends like this across Europe, it seems to us to be one of the most, if not the most, explicit, egregious examples of racial discrimination,” says Susheela Math, a senior managing litigation officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. She is supporting a legal challenge to the package that is now before the Court of Justice of the European Union. 

The latest iteration of the ghetto list, published in December 2023, names 12 neighborhoods as parallel societies, down from 29 in 2018 as the socioeconomic data changed, people moved out or the share of non-Westerners dropped below 50%. Today they are home to about 28,600 people, with the share of non-Western residents ranging from 53.1% to 77.4%, compared with 

10.1% across Denmark. Most residents are from Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan or Iran and, since 2022, Ukraine, though Ukrainians are exempt from the ghetto policies. The non-Western label includes everyone from recently arrived immigrants to passport-holding Danes with at least one parent from the designated countries. 

“We come from so many cultural backgrounds, our common language is Danish,” says Majken Felle, a teacher who lives in the Copenhagen ghetto of Mjølnerparken and is of Danish ancestry. “If you listen when the children play among each other, they always speak Danish.” 

The ghetto laws’ housing policies are subject to regular protests – including a petition signed by 52,000 people and ongoing lawsuits, but the day care rules have flown under the radar by comparison. Since 2019, at least 241 children have been enrolled in the compulsory program, which is free, and the families of at least 53 toddlers have been cut off from public benefits for defying the rules, according to municipal data collected by New Lines. These figures don’t include families who signed up for day care on their own initiative due to the looming threat of legal coercion. 

Amani Hassani, a postdoctoral researcher at Brunel University London who studies the impact of the ghetto laws, sees the policy as a form of “displacement pressure,” meaning better-resourced families can move out to evade the rules while vulnerable residents are left behind, lacking the community support of their former neighbors. 

Conservative lawmakers introduced the day care proposal in 2018, armed with a preliminary study showing that bilingual children with a non-Western background scored poorly in language tests at age 3. While these kids tended to improve by their 6th birthdays, they generally did worse than monolingual families. The study included a few hundred children – – those with parents from Denmark, Western and non-Western countries alike—and was based on standardized language assessments that the researchers acknowledged could be flawed because they don’t take into account how bilingual or socially disadvantaged children learn languages. For the study, educational staff measured kids’ pronunciation and asked them to name objects and colors based on pictures, among other tests, and parents filled out reports on their children’s vocabulary; researchers then assigned them an overall language score. 

Other researchers said that policymakers shouldn’t use these types of language tests to justify mandatory day care because they don’t capture the various ways kids communicate with each other, and argued that young children don’t need to progress in Danish at the exact same pace in order to master the language. Political opposition to the plan also came from professional groups like the early childhood educators’ union and left-wing parties who wanted to encourage day care uptake in other ways, for example by having municipal health workers discuss day care when they meet with new parents. But the legislation ultimately passed the Danish parliament with 78% support. 

“I’m not too worried about the mandatory element,” Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, who have expanded the ghetto legislation since taking control of 

the government in 2019, said during a debate of the bill in 2018. “I will always choose the best interests of the child if that is what is at stake.” 

Indeed, high-quality early childhood programs can positively impact kids’ cognitive, social and behavioral development, particularly for low-income and bilingual children. Long term, they are associated with higher educational levels and mothers’ participation in the workforce. Danes see day care as a tool to level the playing field during a critical period for child development, and the state has guaranteed universal childcare since 2004 — a social investment that is credited with promoting equality in the Scandinavian country of nearly 6 million people. 

“From the invention of day care in Denmark, it has been a political, and especially a professional, tool for crafting a welfare state,” says Christian Sandbjerg Hansen, an associate professor of educational sociology at Aarhus University who opposes the ghetto laws. “It’s become the rule of thumb that 1-year-olds attend day care in some sort of way.” 

The problem with the day care policy, according to childcare workers, parents and researchers, is the compulsory element. If the government really wants to boost day care enrollment, they say, it should focus on outreach and incentives for specific families who are struggling, not threaten financial penalties across mostly low-income, minority neighborhoods. 

“The first three years of your life [are] super important,” says Lisa Bruun, a childcare worker in a ghetto in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city. To help skeptical parents become more comfortable sending their kids to day care, she makes home visits before they’re enrolled and invites them to stick around the center as long as they want. 

The rule that no more than 30% of new day care enrollees can come from vulnerable residential areas, regardless of the center’s capacity or whether a family already has a child enrolled there, can have seemingly counterproductive effects. In a ghetto neighborhood in the port city of Esbjerg, the day care Bydelens Børnehus is sitting half empty despite having a long waitlist of neighborhood kids, according to manager Michael Frederiksen. 

Because parents have to send their 1-year-olds to day care, those on the waitlist trek across town to deposit their kids at other centers – typically 1 to 3 miles away, Frederiksen says, but in one case over 8 miles while they wait for a spot to open up at Bydelens Børnehus. However, families from nonghetto areas don’t face the same redistribution rules, and because they usually send their kids to day care in their own neighborhoods, overall enrollment stays low at Bydelens Børnehus. That means openings for neighborhood children are few and far between, Frederiksen says. 

“We are all instructed and trained to meet children at their core level and really build them up from where children need to be built up,” Frederiksen says, standing in a quiet play area in Bydelens Børnehus. “So much money has been spent on additional training, but the swings stand empty because we can only operate at half capacity.” 

After Marua gave birth last year, getting her daughter on the waitlist for Bydelens Bornehus was one of the first things she did. Her sister’s kids go there, and Marua, who has Turkish and Palestinian ancestry, liked the multicultural, inclusive atmosphere. But when it came time to sign up, the 30% quota meant she had to enroll elsewhere until a place opened at Bydelens Børnehus several months later, which she felt was unfair. 

“I want to teach my daughter that everyone is good enough, and to grow up not worrying about skin color,” says Marua, a 22-year-old education student who asked that only her first name be used. “It’s hard teaching her a set of values, and then these values are not seen across society.” 

The ghetto rules reflect a longer-term strategy to use state-mandated day care for Danish cultural assimilation. Since 2011, bilingual toddlers aged 3 and over have been required to attend day care if their Danish is deemed insufficient, a rule that was expanded to 2-year-olds in 2016. But English- and German-speaking kids are exempt from the rule, which is why Hansen describes the phrase “bilingual families” as a “euphemism for Muslim immigrants.” 

In other words, the day care rules serve as the first reminder for nonwhite parents, particularly Muslims, of the social othering that their children may face as they grow up in Denmark. The laws are “hinting at the fact that the community that’s being built here, within this housing area, is not good enough,” Hassani says. “That’s where the parallel society idea comes from.” 

The ghetto laws have also rolled out in tandem with Denmark’s rightward swing on immigration, which has escalated in recent years. In 2016 Parliament passed a law requiring asylum seekers to hand over jewelry and other valuables to help fund their stays in Denmark; in 2018, it passed a burqa ban; in 2019, the government deemed parts of Syria safe to return to and began revoking the residence permits of refugees; in 2022, it announced plans to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda; and in 2023, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, said she wanted to pull public benefits from non-Western women who don’t work full-time. 

In 2020, Mattias Tesfaye, a Social Democrat who previously served as minister of immigration and integration and is now minister of children and education, told a Copenhagen newspaper that people from some countries “integrate into Danish society without any problems, while others lag behind for several generations. Therefore, the most important thing we can do is to keep the influx down from the countries where the integration problems are greatest.” 

Through a spokesperson, Tesfaye declined an interview request. The Social Democrats, the Red-Green Alliance — a left-wing party that opposed the ghetto laws — and several local politicians either declined or did not respond to requests. 

While Danes tend to have positive views of immigration, the hardline political rhetoric has trickled down to the public. Families with Danish ancestry are more likely to opt out of their local public school if the share of non-Western students exceeds 35%, according to a 2010 study in Copenhagen. More recently, the Danish Institute for Human Rights found that white and well-off 

families are more likely to opt out of local public schools if their district has a ghetto neighborhood. 

When Danish newspapers cover these areas, they focus on violence, drugs, gang activity and police action, and refer to kids there as “ghetto children.” Along with the ghetto policy itself, the media coverage perpetuates the idea that all of the country’s social problems are concentrated in these neighborhoods, Hansen says. 

Residents have a different view of their communities. Ibrahim El-Khatib, 57, raised his three daughters in a ghetto in Høje-Taastrup, after moving to Denmark from Lebanon in 1990. The IT project manager says the image of his neighborhood as a closed-off parallel society doesn’t resonate, but last year he was forced to leave the area because his block was set to be demolished as part of the housing development plan. 

“It was very safe for my kids and other kids – – they were there playing [and] nothing was dangerous,” El-Khatib says. “I call it the most nice ghetto in Denmark. … It was very hard for me and my family to move from there.” 

Over time, children internalize the stigmatizing messages they hear growing up. According to a 2015 OECD report, 63% of Danish kids with parents from Iraq or Somalia felt a sense of belonging at school, roughly 20 percentage points lower than in Denmark’s fellow Nordic nation Finland. 

“It’s often among the children, once they get old enough to understand how they are not just seen without question as Danish, for instance, that they begin to feel hurt and frustrated,” says Kristina Bakkær Simonsen, a political scientist at Aarhus University. 

Farida, who was born in Syria and is raising her three children in the same Copenhagen ghetto where she grew up, is already preparing for those conversations. When her 9-year-old daughter wanted to try wearing a headscarf for a few days, Farida tried to discourage her, worried she would be confronted about it once they left their neighborhood, where about three-quarters of people are considered non-Western. 

“I don’t want my kids growing up having that experience at such a young age,” says Farida, a 37-year-old midwife who asked that only her first name be used. When it’s time to discuss the neighborhood’s stigma, “I would let them come to the conclusion of whether it’s based on racism or whatever, but I think kids are smart. They will figure things out.” 

Several ghetto residents – white and non-Western alike— have filed lawsuits challenging the laws. In the most high-profile case, the EU’s Court of Justice will decide whether the non-Western label singles people out by their ethnicity. If so, Denmark’s development plans for “ghetto” areas could constitute racial discrimination under EU law. The Danish government argues that “non-Western” is a marker for nationality or country of origin, not race or ethnicity. 

The EU court will hear the case in July, and a decision could come as early as next year, says Math from the Open Society Justice Initiative. A legal victory for the residents would send a signal to other EU countries that the bloc’s antidiscrimination laws will be upheld, “and that you can’t evade [them] by using proxy wording for racial or ethnic origin, or by treating racialized groups as second-class citizens in the name of something like integration,” Math says. 

Mjølnerparken resident Felle, one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, says many families have accepted permanent rehousing elsewhere, weary of the uncertainty wrought by various lawsuits and housing displacement. When the latest iteration of the ghetto list came out in December 2023, Mjølnerparken was not on it for the first time. Its education, income, employment and criminal statistics had hardly budged, but it was no longer eligible to be counted. The population had fallen to 966; enough people had left. 

“Many people have lived in Mjølnerparken for like 30 years, 20 years, and grown close with their neighbors, because they have become their family in a country away from their families,” Felle says. “So really this very strong network of support has been uprooted for many people.” 

There’s been little reprieve while the lawsuits play out. Today, housing demolitions and evictions continue, families with the means to do so move away from “ghettos,” parents must ask the state for permission to keep their kids at home and Danish toddlers are sent to day care to learn how to be Danish. For Danish parents with non-Western backgrounds, the politics of the ghetto package reflect Denmark’s reluctance to accept a multicultural society. Now, this conflict is being passed to their own children. 

“I can’t just choose between the two,” Abdol-Hamid says. “I dream in Danish, I think in Danish, I talk Danish. But at the same time, it’s a part of my identity being Palestinian.”

Further Credits:

“Because if I Die, No One Will Care.” Children’s Day at the Border

Is that her? I was supposed to meet a teenager, but in walks a slightly hunched young woman. Petite, about five feet tall, with long, bleached hair. Henna-tinted eyebrows and full lips.

We sit in the kitchen of an old wooden house, now home to new residents. They wanted to escape the city. When refugees started appearing in the forest, they took to helping them.

“Hila, have you eaten?” Maria asks.

“No.”

“What do you want? An egg? Egg [in English in the text, translator’s note]?”

“Yes.” 

A puppy nibbles at our ankles. A monitor displays the driveway outside. When Maria and her husband started going into the forest, they installed cameras—law enforcement agents shine lights into their yard and note down car license plates.

We head to Hila’s room. She sits beneath a wall covered in religious icons. Among the collection of Pope John Paul II’s portraits, she has stuck notes in Farsi reminding herself not to eat sweets—they make her stomach hurt.

“What is it like to be here?” I ask Hila. 

“Like a dream. In Afghanistan, I saw places like this only in movies.” Hila speaks softly and slowly, repeatedly buttoning and unbuttoning the cuff of her checkered shirt. Her eyes glaze over only once—when she recalls the moment in the forest when she felt utterly unwanted.

“Hila” means “dream” in Farsi. That’s the name she chose for this report, though for now, she lives without dreams. 

I wanted to be a doctor

Before she lost her dreams, Hila lived with her mother and sisters in a house with a garden. She never met her father—a high-ranking policeman killed by the Taliban before she was born. Over time, her older sisters moved out, and her mother remarried. Her stepfather did not work. He slept, smoked hashish, or went out. He sold things from the house to buy drugs. Never food for them.

“My younger sister and I were hungry,” Hila admits. “And my stepfather was always yelling at me. I didn’t know he wasn’t my real father. The neighbours told me when I was nine.” 

Hila’s mother worked as a cleaner and cook so they could eat. At 14, she was married off early, had daughters young, and always told them: Study. One of Hila’s sisters became a gynaecologist and stayed in Afghanistan with her husband. The other graduated from university and moved to the U.S. 

Hila studied hard, too. “I dreamed of becoming a doctor like my sister. I loved her white coats. Sometimes she dressed me in them and took me to the clinic,” she says, smiling.

Four years ago, their mother died of stomach cancer. “She was 53,” Hila whispers. “She always told us we must be free, strong, and independent.” 

My stepfather sold me

Six months later, the Taliban took over. Hila was 16 years old. One day, her stepfather announced that he was taking her younger sister to visit his family, and Hila was to stay behind.

Cars pulled up in front of the house. Strangers came in, saying they were taking Hila to her father and sister, but they took her to a building where they were nowhere to be found. “He sold you,“ she was told. The man who had “bought” her claimed to be her husband. He imprisoned, beat, and raped her.

She managed to escape. In Kabul, she bought a fake passport and a student visa to Russia. Her half-sister, whose husband worked for the Germans, helped. Before the Taliban arrived, they were evacuated to Berlin.

Hila wanted to get out of Afghanistan.

At the airport, the guards asked where she was flying to. From under her hijab she whispered that she was joining her husband and would study in Russia. They said she should study in Afghanistan. “But girls can’t,” she thought, but only repeated that her husband was waiting in the Emirates. They let her board the flight—through Dubai to Moscow. 

After a year, her visa expired. Everywhere she went, she was told it could only be renewed in Afghanistan.

Luckily, she met an Afghan family planning to go to Germany with their young child. She joined them. 

The men dug a tunnel

Hila tells me how she arrived at the Polish-Belarusian border.

They were stuck in Minsk for two months. Hila shared a room with an Afghan woman and her child, while up to 20 men crowded into another. The Afghan family was short on money and was looking for a cheap smuggler.

People who had returned from the border would visit their apartment. They spoke of being bitten by dogs, running out of food, or being beaten. But some later called from Germany.

At the end of May 2023, Hila and the entire group arrived at the Belarusian border. The men dug a tunnel. 

“You had to squeeze through headfirst and reach out your hands, while someone on the other side pulled you through,” Hila recounts. “I didn’t worry about whether it was legal because everyone did it. Pregnant women, the elderly, small children.”

Then they fell asleep in the forest. 

He was playing with a cat, yelling at people

“When I opened my eyes, I saw a big dog and Belarusian guards. I covered myself with my hijab and kept repeating: ‘I can’t see you.’”

They beat one of the men and packed everyone into cars.

“I prayed that they would not send us deep into Belarus. We had already spent seven days in the jungle. Soaking wet, without water or food.”

At night the Belarusians drove them somewhere. There were already 150 people there, and the guards kept bringing in more.

“They beat the Africans very badly,” Hila shudders. “I noticed a family with daughters. One of them was holding a cat. A guard smiled and played with the cat. At the same time, he yelled at people and shoved them. That’s when I realized this wasn’t a movie. This was my life.” 

The Belarusians drove them to the middle of the forest. They picked a leader, left him with a phone and a power bank. They took the rest. Then they said:

“Go. If you come back, we will beat you. Or kill you.”

Hila knew some Russian. She translated the message to the rest of the group.

They walked for days again. It rained nonstop. Hila was drenched, unable to remove the insects tangled in her hair. Her head and face swelled, red from bites, while her feet turned white from the water in her shoes. She was freezing. 

“There was a 13-year-old boy with us, all alone,” recalls Hila. “He looked at me sadly.”

He tried to get up but got dizzy and collapsed.

Someone in the group muttered that he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for a long time. We drank water from the leaves and from the ground. I don’t know how many days I spent in the jungle [sic, translator’s note]—I think two weeks.

Nobody needs me

By mid-June, they reached the Polish border. The men decided to make a ladder. They set fire to a tree and burned it until it could be broken. It took them two days. They tied the rungs with shoelaces. In the evening, they went to the fence. Hila climbed the ladder. She doesn’t know how she fell on the other side.

When she opened her eyes, she saw three unfamiliar boys. They handed her an energy drink.

“I will never forget that lemon taste,” Hila smiles. “They were also from Afghanistan. They said that after me, many more people went over the fence, and no one stopped. I lay like that for several hours.”

One of the boys carried her on his back. He was thin and not very strong, so he left Hila’s backpack with all her belongings behind. When he tried to put her down, she couldn’t stand, not even for a moment. Another one took her on his back.

In the morning, she told them: “Leave me, go. If the police found you, I’d feel guilty.” But they kept repeating: “No. If we get caught, we’ll cross again.”

They made a makeshift stretcher and kept walking. They tried to make her laugh, kept her awake. They climbed trees to find signal and call for help.

They called out: “Help! Help!” No one answered. Using perfume, they lit a fire. One shouted:

“I’ll burn this whole fucking jungle! Why is no one here?!”

They carried Hila closer to the fence. One stayed behind while the others went to get help.

“When they came back, one of them sat down and started crying. I asked why. And he said: “Why aren’t you crying, why aren’t you screaming, why aren’t you sad?”

I told him: “Because if I die, no one will care. Nobody needs me.”

Photo: Agnieszka Rodowicz

Photo: Agnieszka Rodowicz

Children behind the border fence. May 2024. Photo by Agnieszka Rodowicz.

I was full of ticks

Eventually, the activists came. The boys were given food, dry clothes, and shoes. One gave Hila $200, and they moved on. The medic gave Hila a painkiller and called the state ambulance.

“The way to the ambulance was terrible,” Hila recalls. “My legs kept hitting trees and bushes. Every touch caused excruciating pain. In the ambulance, I started screaming because the pain was getting worse. The paramedics yelled, ‘Shut up!’ while I wailed and sobbed all the way to the hospital.” 

Hila sent a message to her stepsister. “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. I have to repay her for everything she did for me,” Hila’s voice trembles.

They sent her to another hospital, where they finally removed her wet and dirty clothes. She was full of ticks.

I have six metal implants in my back

When she opened her eyes, she had four IVs, and a large machine was pumping painkillers into her. Despite this, she cried from the pain.

After two months, her arms were covered in wounds from the IVs. She couldn’t move, wash herself, or do anything on her own. She asked the nurses to cut her hair. They protested. Instead, they fed her, made her laugh, and gently washed her head—then, piece by piece, her entire body.

“It was an amazing feeling after two months without washing!” she recalls. 

After weeks of rehabilitation, with the help of the nurses, she managed to sit up.

“I was so happy to see my feet! The physiotherapists asked me to move my leg. I couldn’t. I was terrified they would amputate it.”

By the middle of the third month, Hila received crutches. The nerves in her operated leg were damaged, so she couldn’t feel pain. As soon as she managed to stand, she started walking. First with two crutches, then one, then eventually on her own.

“I have two screws in my foot, six metal implants in my back. To this day, I have no sensation in certain parts of my body. They said it should improve after another surgery. Maybe.” 

Anatomy atlases of the white race

When undocumented foreigners claim to be minors, the Border Guard refers them for an age check. They take an X-ray of their wrist or assess their teeth.

“There is no method that can confirm a person’s age with 100% accuracy,” says lawyer Ewa Ostaszewska-Żuk from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. “The margin of error in these tests is two years. On top of that, they rely on so-called anatomy atlases from the 1950s, based on studies of the white race. These are not applicable to people from African or Middle Eastern countries. Yet doctors don’t take that into account.” 

“For Europe, determining age, the calendar—it’s a fetish,” adds Maria. “In many countries, kids don’t even know their exact birthdate. And really, what difference does it make whether someone is 17 or 19? Everyone deserves decent treatment.”

“Sometimes people have two documents with different birthdates,” adds Jarek. He and his wife Asia care for unaccompanied teenagers in hospitals and support them when they move into foster care.

“Some people don’t know how to write their birthdate in the Anglo-Saxon format—or at all—because they are illiterate,” says Jarek. 

“There are countries where the calendar is completely different, adds Asia.

“We are caring for someone from Afghanistan who was born in the year 1375. Higher mathematics is needed to convert that.”

The Border Guard had no doubts about Hila’s age because her sister sent a copy of her identity document. Even so, it took a long time to find a care facility for her—there simply weren’t enough places.

“As a result, the Border Guard delays accepting applications from underage foreigners,” explains Agnieszka Matejczuk, a lawyer from the Association for Legal Intervention (SiP). 

Not enough places, a makeshift guardian

According to the law, a foreigner aged 15 or older who is undergoing return proceedings leading to deportation may be placed in a Guarded Center for Foreigners (SOC). However, if they are under 15 or apply for international protection, they cannot be detained there. The application, however, must be submitted in the presence of a guardian. The minor can declare their intent to seek protection, which obligates the Border Guard (SG) to transfer them to a care facility and request a guardian. 

“But there are not enough places in care facilities, nor are there enough guardians, so the SG often ‘doesn’t hear’ minors’ declarations,” adds Matejczuk. “We are one of the few EU countries where there are no professionals trained to act as guardians. There is also no single person responsible for safeguarding the child’s interests. The court appoints a guardian for each case. By law, it has three days to do so, but in practice, this can take up to five weeks.” 

A candidate for the guardian role should be a legal adviser, an attorney, or a representative of an NGO providing legal aid to foreigners.

“But no one volunteers, so the court picks someone at random, often someone without the necessary knowledge,” says Olga Hilik from SiP.

Care facilities are also reluctant to accept refugee minors. 

“They explain that there are not enough places,” says Hilik. ”However, they are legally obligated to accept a child when the SG brings them in. Still, it is common for a child to be sent away.”

For a young person, it is crushing to feel like no one wants them.

This creates a massive systemic gap.

Did I break my back for this?

Hila applied for international protection in Poland but wanted to join her sister in Germany. The family reunification procedure can apply to siblings, but the fact that they were half-sisters complicated matters.

Hila, who at the time was still unable to walk, was supposed to be placed in a care facility for people with disabilities. When a place was finally found, the court ruled that a child could not be placed there without a disability certificate. But such a certificate cannot be issued to someone in asylum proceedings. 

In the end, a place was found for Hila in a children’s home. The director claims that the Border Guard never consulted her. They simply stated that Hila would be staying there and that was that.

“I was supposed to share a room with another girl. She didn’t want to be with me,” Hila recalls. “Little kids would come up to me and ask, ‘Where are you from? Show us your country on the map.’ The older ones weren’t so nice. I thought: Is this the life I came here for? Did I break my back for this?” 

“A few days later, she went with the other orphans to Jasna Góra,” says Maria. “Children’s homes in Poland are very church-oriented. This is a problem because not all the kids there are Christian. Hila isn’t.”

“When I was in pain, when I was sick, I asked for medicine, for painkillers, but the caregivers told me they couldn’t give me anything,” Hila says. “For the other children, they had plenty of medicine. They gave them vitamins, but not me.”

Sometimes, the home would order McDonald’s for all the children—except Hila.

“Is there anything you like in Poland?” I ask her.

“Karolina.” 

Karolina, a social work educator specializing in rehabilitation, previously worked with children with autism. For the past two years, she has been supporting minors who arrived in Poland via the Belarusian border. Like Maria, she works for a foundation in Podlasie. They do not disclose its name or their full names, as they don’t want to worsen their already difficult relations with children’s homes.

“I act as a kind of intermediary,” Karolina says. “I connect psychotraumatologists with care facilities, doctors with guardians, lawyers with children.”

I painted a blonde woman in flames

We take a walk around Maria’s house. In the yard are chickens and ducks. “Happy Woman’s Day,” Hila says to them, because it happens to be 8 March. She talks about how Karolina would pick her up every few days from the children’s home and take her to rehabilitation. Karolina also invited Hila to her home for Christmas. 

After four months, I was finally in a real home,” the Afghan girl recalls. “We sang, we cooked. I also went to the cinema for the first time in my life. It was wonderful. I felt like I was in a film.”

Karolina brought her a sketchbook and paints. Hila painted a field of flowers, coils of razor wire, and a blonde woman in flames. Since then, she has painted dozens of pictures.

And what does Hila’s future look like?

“They are going to put a prosthesis in my spine. Maybe then I’ll regain feeling. I’d like to go to school.”

We go back to Hila’s room.

“I think the worst is behind me, but things aren’t great,” she says. “When I have a problem, I say: ‘Gods, help me.’” She laughs, pointing to the holy pictures on the walls. There’s also a clock with an invocation to Allah and a prayer from the Quran embroidered on a tapestry. 

“I still believe there is someone up there.”

“What else keeps you going?”

“That I have a younger sister. I will do anything for her. For now, I don’t know where she is. I hope she is alive and that my older sister will find her.”

If a child speaks Pashto

Two years ago, two teenage girls from African countries were caught by the Border Guard. They were placed in a children’s home in Podlasie. They spoke only French and could not communicate with anyone. For six months, no one issued them a PESEL number or any documents, so they could not attend school. They complained about being left to fend for themselves. One of them had a toothache for two weeks, but the caretakers only gave her painkillers. Looking for help, they found Karolina’s foundation. 

“When I first dealt with children’s homes, I took certain things for granted,” Karolina admits. “I assumed that the home would provide medical care and education. It turned out that wasn’t the case. We arranged online Polish lessons for the girls and made a dentist appointment. A complex root canal treatment was needed,” Karolina explains. 

The activists also found the girls a French-speaking psychologist. They took them for walks and shopping.

“Children from the border have nothing, sometimes not even a comb, let alone winter boots,” says Karolina. “We help because the facilities lack resources and staff. Some children’s homes do what is legally required, others put more heart into it. Some don’t even try to find a translator, yet the children sometimes speak only Pashto, Dari, or Somali. So, we look for translators, either in person or by phone.”

The African girls had stomach problems—they were not used to eating white bread twice a day. The activists bought them beef, semolina, and vegetables so they could cook for themselves. The children’s home accused the women of spoiling them. 

“I feel like some facilities are just waiting for these children to run away, for someone to take them,” Karolina says. “And they do disappear. Most often boys, but girls too. Not knowing the country or the system, they can easily fall prey to traffickers.” 

Director: The girl should give birth

Usually 16, 17-year-old girls don’t talk about it.

“They are ashamed and afraid. In their countries, raped women can be sentenced to death,” Karolina explains. “Besides, after training with La Strada, we know that people who have gone through such experiences, even when they are under care, think it’s just another stop on a trafficking route. We don’t know the full scale of it because women rarely speak about it.” 

“We are convinced that there are no women at the Polish-Belarusian border who have not been victims of sexual violence,” adds Maria. “In their home countries, in Russia and Belarus, and at the border itself. From what we hear, also at the hands of Polish services. If we suspect something, we should report it to the authorities. But calling them in the forest could result in deportation, exposing the women to more rape. That’s why we don’t call them.” 

One of the African girls arrived in Poland pregnant, the result of rape in Russia or Belarus. She did not want to give birth. A lawyer filed a request with the court for permission to terminate the pregnancy. The children’s home was against it. The director stated outright that the girl should give birth. However, the court ruled in her favour, and the pregnancy was terminated in a hospital.

“Our charge was treated with great compassion and understanding there,” Karolina recalls. 

Border children left on their own

“We believe that trafficking victims should be as far from the Belarusian border as possible,” Karolina says.

La Strada helped relocate the girls to Warsaw.

“Our contact with the capital’s children’s home showed that everything can be arranged with a little effort. We were invited to meetings. We shared information about the girls because they trusted us and stayed in touch.” 

Unfortunately, one of the girls disappeared. She was not yet of age.

“We don’t know if traffickers took her—there is that risk,” Karolina says. “Border children left on their own can get into trouble. Fortunately, if they are studying, they don’t have to leave the children’s home after turning 18. If they had to become independent in Poland after just a year or two, it would be very difficult,” she adds.

Knowing that one of the girls dreamed of becoming a model, the activists arranged a real photo shoot for her. It turned out she had talent. Unfortunately, the Office for Foreigners (UDsC) did not issue her any documents or work permits for a year and a half. 

Help in the forest is a piece of cake

Medical knowledge in care facilities is also poor.

Since 2015, Petra Medica has been implementing an agreement with the Office for Foreigners (UDsC), providing medical care for foreigners, including minors applying for protection in Poland.

“But Petra Medica, just like the National Health Fund (NFZ), is reluctant to issue prescriptions, and treatment is not immediate,” complains Karolina. “Hila can’t wait, so we look for treatment privately.” 

The Foundation also arranges for the girl to be seen by a traumatologist.

Refugee children who are in foster care do not receive any money from the state.

“The issue of the 800+ program is unresolved. One lawyer said these children are entitled to it, another said they are not,” complains Maria.

Foster homes provide actual care but do not have the authority to make decisions regarding medical matters. Even anaesthesia for dental treatment or rehabilitation requires consent. When a hospital sets a surgery date, a court decision must be made in time to approve it. Previously, before the consent came, Hila’s broken heel healed incorrectly. 

“Obtaining legal custody of a child is complicated. In Hila’s case, we would need to prove, for example, that her parents are deceased,” says Maria. “How, when Afghanistan does not issue death certificates? The help we provide in the forest, including wading through swamps and hiding in ditches from the Border Guard, is a piece of cake compared to helping these children. It’s black magic and bouncing from door to door.” 

“Schools require documents confirming where the children have studied,” adds Karolina. “There is no way to get them from their countries of origin, so finding a school in Poland is a miracle. The authorities have changed, and we have reported all the problems to the Ombudsman for Children. Maybe something will be done about it,” the activists hope. 

A POPH activist monitors the situation of people gathering at the Polish fence, especially a group of underage Somali girls. Photo by Agnieszka Rodowicz.

Photo: Agnieszka Rodowicz

A volunteer from the Ocalenie Foundation visits a lonely teenager in the hospital, who was found in a Polish forest near the border with Belarus. Photo by Agnieszka Rodowicz

The doll sings about freedom

When we meet again, Hila is wearing a thin ecru blouse, which emphasizes her porcelain complexion. She has sharp black nails with white patterns. She has something of a businesswoman about her. She jokes with Maria that she would manage the foundation’s money better. The Afghan girl is staying at Maria’s house.

“She sees the foster home as another prison. We managed to arrange things, and the facility allowed Hila to take a leave. The girl was revived,” says Maria. 

I ask how the village has reacted to Hila’s presence.

“We don’t talk to the neighbours since they found out we were helping in the forest,’” says Maria.

Hila takes a big mermaid doll out of a box, presses her tummy, and the doll sings.

“She sings about freedom,” explains Maria. “We found it in the forest, like many other things belonging to the refugees.”

Hila hugs the doll and browses through some documents, a receipt from a jeweller, banknotes, and a Bible in Arabic.

“I had perfume with me that my mother used and a tiny prayer book I got at the mosque. Everything was lost in the jungle. I lost my phone, documents, and dreams there.” 

Lone teenagers wander in the wilderness

From 1 July 2021 to 31 December 2021, the Border Guard recorded eleven unaccompanied minors on the Polish-Belarusian border.

Colonel Andrzej Juźwiak, acting Spokesperson for the Commander-in-Chief of the Border Guard, claims that for 2022-2023, there is no such data. The Wearemonitoring association, which monitors the humanitarian crisis at the border, registered reports from 139 minors without guardians in 2023. 

Since mid-March, activists have reported an increasing number of lone teenagers wandering in the Bialowieza Forest. From the beginning of the year to the end of April, the Border Group has already received 134 reports from them. Many have no plan, leading to so-called “revelations” to the Border Guard.

“If there are witnesses, most protection requests are accepted,” says Michał, an activist from the Border Group. “The Border Guard in Dubicze Cerkiewne and Bialowieza is overwhelmed and sends ‘clients’ to other facilities in Podlasie, which are not prepared for it. If there are no witnesses to the detention, refugees are pushed back to Belarus, regardless of age or whether they want protection or not,” Michał claims. 

Pushbacks from Border Guard facilities and hospitals still occur. Wearemonitoring is aware of at least 28 minors being pushed back from the beginning of the year until the end of April.

On 27 May 2024, Andrzej Juźwiak responded: “This year, no unaccompanied minor has been recorded at the border section with Belarus.” He also claims that the Border Guard is in contact with care facilities, and there are available places there. 

Huge groups of minors are coming

According to activists, orphanages are packed to the brim. Olga Hilik from SiP says that even intervention centres no longer want to accept minors. Perhaps that’s why, when the Border Guard takes people claiming to be minors for age testing, most “turn out” to be adults.

Juźwiak claims that from January 1 to May 20, 2024, only 9 unaccompanied minors were admitted to SOCs (closed camps for asylum seekers), and currently, there is only one there.

Olga Hilik says that in Przemyśl alone, there were six minors recently. 

“Because huge groups of minors aged 16-17 are coming,” says Asia. “Mostly Somali teenagers, the majority of which are girls. We ask them if they knew each other before embarking on the journey. No. They read on Facebook that it’s enough to get to the fence and they’ll be let in. Their brother or sister, already in Belgium or the UK, sends money, and the kids go.

If they get through the fence, some end up in orphanages, some in SOCs or open centres. And most of them first go to the hospital. With stomach problems from drinking swamp water, respiratory and urinary infections, hypothermia, exhaustion. There are also broken limbs, torn knee ligaments, and cuts from the barbed wire.

“But above all, they are terribly dehydrated and malnourished,” says Asia. “Especially those who survived the winter in Belarus. They look like they’ve just come out of a concentration camp in Auschwitz.” 

Crawling through the Bialowieza Forest

At the end of March, several aid groups received a call and photos of a young Yemeni man. He has no right leg, the other is partially disabled, and he complains of kidney pain. He tried to walk on crutches but couldn’t manage, so he crawled through the Bialowieza Forest. For two months, I asked activists from different groups if they knew what happened to him. They didn’t know.

Since the beginning of April, the Podlaskie Voluntary Humanitarian Rescue (POPH) has been in contact with a lone 16-year-old from Egypt who asked for help. Around April 20, activists received another call from him. Polish soldiers caught him in the forest. He showed them a request written in Polish on his phone: “I am a minor. Please grant me international protection in Poland.” They smashed his phone and threw the boy back into Belarus. 

”We went to the fence to see the boy and make contact with him,” says Agata Kluczewska from POPH and the Free Us Foundation. “He spent two years in Belarus, was on the Latvian border, and endured torture there. We reported the case to the Border Guard, the police, the Ombudsman, and the Children’s Rights Ombudsman. We wrote to family courts and the European Court of Human Rights.

“We don’t know what, but something worked,” says Agata Kluczewska.

The boy was allowed into Poland. Information about the action spread on the internet. Since then, POPH has been receiving more calls for help every day. 

For a month, activists have been monitoring the situation at the fence almost 24 hours per day. They report that soldiers and Territorial Defence troops calmly eat in front of starving people. They walk along the fence listening to loud disco-polo music on their phones.

However, it also happens that Border Guard patrols, at the request of activists, pass food, sleeping bags, and clothing to people on the other side of the fence. 

“But often, we hear from the military: ‘No one was here today,’” says Kasia Mazurkiewicz-Bylok from POPH. “And from behind the fence, we get a photo of a soldier facing the person taking the picture. Or a message: ‘They sprayed us with gas, we ran away.’ At the end of May, even a baby was sprayed with gas.” 

How the hellish lottery works

When people gather by the border post, POPH collects their details—shouted through the fence, or sent by phone. And dozens, hundreds of photos of injuries. People complain of stomach pain, asthma, breathing problems, allergies. There are people with heart attacks, broken spines, partially paralyzed, bitten by dogs, stung by insects so badly they can’t open their eyes, unconscious. Pregnant women, those who have miscarried, cancer patients, people with festering wounds, burns, vomiting children. 

Activists write emails wherever they can and get no response. Ten, twenty, fifty times.

“We keep writing, calling, because sometimes it works. Maybe, because someone gets let in or taken away by ambulance,” says Agata Kluczewska. “We put more people on the list. Often, three are let in. We don’t know why those three. We don’t know how this hellish lottery works.” 

A call and photos of a young Yemeni man came to aid groups. He has no right leg, the other one is disabled. He tried to walk on crutches. He couldn’t, he crawled through the Białowieża Forest. For two months I asked activists if they knew what had happened to him. Photo. Agnieszka Rodowicz.

Girls desperately cling to the fence

On a weekend in May, I join the activists at the fence. I find a boy from Yemen behind it, missing a leg. He sits on the Belarusian side, but on Polish soil. He smiles shyly and places his hand on his heart. He was fleeing the war. He probably stepped on a landmine. He sends me a photo. His leg is amputated high above the knee. Next to the boy, there are crutches. Just beside him sit several girls, and teenage boys are milling around. At night, the Belarusians come back, hunting people. The girls scream desperately, clinging tightly to the polish fence. The Belarusians drag them away, tossing food and sleeping bags into the fire. A red column of flame bursts out.

In the morning, people return to the fence. Families with children, young and old men, middle-aged women. And lone teenagers. From Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen.

Raped girls, boys beaten by Polish and Belarusian services.

Exhausted, Abdullahi leans against a fence after a pushback.

Fatima, with diabetes, has no medication.

Zeinab complains of stomach pain.

Brothers Adam and Khadir, ask for water and food. They stretch their hands through the fence.

The soldiers do not react. Between Poland and Belarus, a tricolour cat strolls by. We can feed her, but not the children. 

Further Credits:
Włodek Nowak – editor

The report was made possible in part thanks to the support of the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation (FWPN).