ICERAS

This article is based on the report “Deaths of Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Young People in the Care of, or Supported by, Local Authorities”, commissioned by Da’aro Youth Project and published in April 2026. The research draws on information collected from UK local authorities through Freedom of Information requests and covers deaths recorded between 2015 and 2024.
Between 2015 and 2024, at least 54 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people died while in the care of, or supported by, the local authorities.
Eritrean children and young people made up around 12.5% of unaccompanied asylum-seeking child applications during this period.
Yet they account for more than half of all suicide deaths among this group.
This is a deeply painful reality.
It means Eritrean young people, while not the largest group arriving in the UK, are disproportionately represented in the most tragic outcomes.
Behind these figures are real lives, shaped not only by migration, but by actual lived experience under a brutal regime before they ever left Eritrea, and by journeys marked by extreme danger. readmore