SCOTTISH experts who visited refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk last week to bear witness to the conditions, have called for action to be taken to protect separated children who are living in intolerable situations where they are vulnerable to exploitation.

The group visiting the camp included the SNP's Justice and Home Affairs team at Westminster, former Somali refugee and “Glasgow Girl” Amal Azzudin, human rights campaigner and refugee Pinar Aksu, and Professor Alison Phipps and Dr Teresa Piacentini of the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network at the University of Glasgow (Gramnet).

Researchers, refugee practitioners and a senior psychologist also took part in a three-day visit where they met representatives of Médecins Sans Frontières and Help Refugees UK as well as refugees and other volunteers.

Speaking to The National yesterday, several of the Scottish party said vulnerable young people in the camps needed protection.

Under a court ruling made in January – following a test case by Citizen’s UK – children with families in the UK have the legal right to come to Britain. But although Citizens UK has identified at least 150 young people with such a right, only a handful of under-18s have so far been allowed to join their families.

According to the Refugee Rights data project, almost half of the children aged 12-17 interviewed last month in The Jungle were trying to join relatives in Britain. Many continue to risk their lives jumping on moving lorries.

Helen Baillot, an independent researcher into asylum whose work has focused on forced migration, trafficked women and separated children, said separated children were often bewildered, did not understand their options, and felt unable to engage with the French authorities, seeing only police, of whom they were afraid. French social workers do visit but on an ad hoc basis, according to volunteers.

She added: “Separated children are obviously at risk; they are living in intolerable conditions with unrelated adults and there are major concerns about their vulnerability to people-smuggling as well as the fact that they may risk their lives to get to the UK.

“There needs to be something systematic in place that ensures every young person is able to access legal advice to assess their rights.

“If they do have the legal right to come to the UK then they should not be risking their lives in order to do so. If they do not then they should be offered another option.

“Some children have been offered accommodation and resettled. Others might not choose to do so, but it should be discussed with them; they should be helped to engage.”

Anne McLaughlin MSP said the UK Government should meet its legal and moral responsibilities.

“Does anyone really feel comfortable that children without parents are sleeping side-by-side with adult strangers and there is no statutory oversight of their wellbeing?” she added.

“I know I don’t. We can do something about it and it is callous in the extreme for the UK Government not to do everything it can to protect them.”

Senior psychologist Dr Anne Douglas said young people were living with layers of trauma. “Unaccompanied children are coping with the initial separation from their families, plus whatever horrors they have faced on their journeys,” she said. “In addition they are probably feeling survivor guilt about those they left behind. Living in this environment as your identity is being formed as a young person is also very worrying; it’s a very negative identity as they are unable to be clear about the future.”

Professor Alison Phipps of Gramnet said: “We met young people who were living without any structure in their lives; that’s catastrophic for young people. They are living without any hope.

“When we asked what they wanted to do in the future they told us that they had no future. And this is going on in one of the richest countries in the world. It is unconscionable.”