There are now only 35 refugee children on Nauru, with more expected to leave in the coming days.

Fifty minors have arrived in Australia since October 15 - partly as a result of Australian Federal Court orders - and the government has signalled a desire to "quietly" get all children off the island by Christmas. Continue reading

MSF said it was informed on Friday 5 October by the Government of Nauru that it was no longer required and terminated its provision of mental health care services on the island.

They were given 24 hours to leave the country.

MSF says that all of its international staff have now left the island where they had been working since November 2017.

Barri Phatarfod, the founder and president of Australian organisation Doctors for Refugees, told the ABC's Pacific Beat program she was stunned by the Nauruan Government's move.

"It's incredibly dangerous and it's grossly irresponsible," she said.

"Nowhere in medicine do you ever see 24 hours to stop, [there is] no basis to have suddenly stopped midway through.

"The explanation is that mental health support is no longer required.

"It's clearly required; self-harm syndrome, life-threatening psychiatric disorders."

Psychiatrist Beth O'Connor, who had been stationed by MSF on Nauru for 11 months, said the refugees would find it difficult to receive the critical health care they needed.

Court-ordered medical evacuations of refugees from Nauru would be hampered by MSF's removal, she said.

"The process of both children and adults with mental and physical illnesses being transferred off Nauru is complicated," O'Connor said.

"There is a lack of independent opinions and that is problematic."

It has been speculated that the MSF practice of giving patients access to their files, some of which have become public, was the trigger for the Government's decision to evict the organisation.

MSF had provided its refugee patients with their medical records which had been used in court applications for evacuation, but O'Connor said MSF had no control over what patients did with their records.

Source

• abc.net.au
• radionz.co.nz
• Image: abc.net.au

"I look back and I could have died many times. But I try to stop thinking of it. It is too much pain. Many people are losing their lives."

Jamieson - not his real name - is staying in a reception centre for unaccompanied children in the Sicilian hilltop town of Montedoro, run by the Etnos Co-operativa charity.

He is one of many thousands of minors who are now fleeing their homelands without any family to protect them along the way. According to Save the Children, the youngest child to arrive on his own in Sicily was aged just nine.

Jamieson was frightened, he says, as his crowded boat pushed off from the Libyan coast into choppy waters - "it got calmer later" - but attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe is only the latest risk that unaccompanied children such as Jamieson must take. To get this far, they have made long and petrifying journeys, travelling across countries and continents for not just weeks or even months, but for years.

Speaking English, which he learned at school, Jamieson explains why he had to flee his country, Gambia. "The rebel people used to attack our village. Capture children. They would grip you" - he mimes being grasped around the chest and lifted - "and carry you [away]. I see that happen to others. The police were no good."

When he was 15, Jamieson's mother told him the risks were too great and he had to leave. The teenager walked, "only me, alone", over the border into Senegal. The next two years were spent scrabbling for work, food and shelter as he travelled by foot and bus through Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and then, in a pickup truck crammed with 38 people, across the desert to Libya. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian, from an article by Louise Tickle, who specialises in writing about education, social affairs, ethical business and development.
• Image: Carbonated.tv