"Tonight, a Panorama exclusive from the crossing point of the world's most dangerous migration routes out of Africa, destination Europe." "Thousands are fleeing one of the continent's most oppressive rogue states." "Among them, children, some as young as seven, trying it alone." "It's quite difficult to comprehend such young children walking days, erm, leaving their families, crossing borders, travelling with smugglers they've never met before." "It's still shocking." "It's still shocking." "They crossed thousands of miles of desert wilderness." "Then they have to cross the Mediterranean Sea." "The sea." "The sea, I just was happy and a little bit scared." "And seeing people praying, crying." "We were so young when we started." "So, I'm so lucky." "Now, Panorama's discovered teenagers aren't just travelling the route, they're being forced to earn their passage by helping the people smugglers." "TRANSLATION:" "The only solution was for me to captain the boat." "That would help me." "I said, "I don't know how to do it, but I can learn."" "And, as the migration season approaches, in what threatens to be its most deadly year yet," "Europe has cut the number of rescue boats." "An unfolding tragedy of horrific portions." "Migrants from Africa trying to reach" "Europe earlier this month." "Hundreds of them crammed into four inflatable dinghies on rough winter seas." "Two of the dinghies capsized, one simply vanished." "300 people dead in that one day." "But the tide of overcrowded boats continues." "Already this year, the death toll on the Med is around 15 times higher than at the same point last year." "But it's also shaping up as a record year for arrivals, too." "This young man made the journey when he was just 15 years old." "A lone child on a smuggler's boat." "Now a refugee in Rome, he's still too scared of the regime he fled to show his face." "When you saw Europe for the first time, how did you feel?" "I was happy and I was feeling like Columbus." "Columbus, the explorer?" "Columbus, yes, the explorer." "Europe was my dream." "Whereabouts in Europe do you really want to get to?" "What's your ideal destination?" "I was a good, good football player, so... ..my target was United Kingdom, Manchester." " Because of Manchester United?" " Yes." "It's the kind of youthful innocence you encounter a lot on this journey, because the migrants attempting it are getting younger." "And these are their main sea routes into Europe - the western route, taking migrants to Spain and the Canary Islands, the eastern route, out of war-torn Syria, through Turkey and across the Med..." "..and then the vast central route, out of Libya, which sweeps migrants from the Horn of Africa." "That was the route taken by our 15-year-old in Rome." "We wanted to find its source." "This is the Sudanese capital, Khartoum." "Foreign journalists are rarely allowed to film here, but the authorities have decided it's time to show the world what's happening on their eastern border, and why Europe should be alarmed." "It's taken us weeks to get permission to come here, because the area we're heading towards is a sensitive one - it's a border region where there's gun smuggling and there's drug trafficking." "And it's also where tens of thousands of migrants come across each year, because, unbelievably, here in the heart of Africa, it's where one of the key migration routes into Europe begins." "Ahead, a 10-hour drive across a vast dust plains." "Mud-brick villages stretch to the horizon." "We're approaching a border dividing three countries " "Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea." "It's Eritrea, a country of just six million people, which is the source of refugees on an astonishing scale." "One Sudanese border town receives more than any other." "Kassala hugs right up against Eritrea." "We arrive at night, with the town framed by the Taka Mountains." "Beyond them lies Africa's most secretive rogue state." "Eritrea endured more than 30 years of fighting for its independence from Ethiopia." "Tens of thousands lost their lives." "Now, this Marxist-inspired totalitarian state, ruled by President Isaias Afwerki, suffers a crippled economy, random political detentions and torture." "Just last year, there were reports that migrants were being shot on sight for trying to escape across its border." "I'm standing in a particularly sensitive spot at the moment, because this is Sudan, but if I just step a few paces this way," "I'm on the Eritrean border." "In fact, just inside it." "And this, over there, is one of the most closed countries in the world." "And, yes, here at the border, it's well monitored." "People are coming through with papers." "But on either side, you're off into the wilderness." "It was near here that our 15-year-old in Rome slipped across the border." "His brother was killed whilst fighting for the EDF, the Eritrean Defence Forces." "Faced with that prospect, he fled." "When I crossed the border, I took the long way, because there are two ways." "The first way is so short - you walk, like, for four hours and you are in Kassala." "You just have to cross the mountain." "But there is so many soldiers." "So I took the other way." "And I walked for like five days and I arrived behind Kassala." "When you're 15, most people would be too scared to abandon their country and to leave their mum and dad behind." "It's a question of life." "I can say Eritrea is a little hell... ..so everybody knows that we don't have a future." "You cannot make it." "You cannot stay there." "Like many others, his first stepping stone to Europe was a vast refugee camp, isolated in the Sudanese desert." "There are no roads to take us there, just tracks in the dust." "The camp has rarely been filmed." "We're being escorted by Sudanese security and the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR, which oversees it." "New arrivals - bewildered, relieved - are checked in." "Almost all will receive asylum because of the oppressive nature of the regime they've left behind in Eritrea." "None will be classed as economic migrants." "A small number of refugees have stayed in this camp for 50 years - raising families, keeping livestock and hoping one day their country's safe enough to return to." "But the vast majority will use this as a staging post for the onward journey." "It's a vast area, this, isn't it?" "It feels more like a town than a refugee camp." "Actually, yes, we have actually here, like, three refugee camps adjacent to each other." "Each one is between two and a half to three and a half kilometres and it's quite big, actually." " It's like a big, big town." " How many refugees do you have?" "In Shagarab refugee camps, we have around 35,000 refugees, but in the east of Sudan, the total number is around 110,000 refugees." "Around 95%, I would say, from Eritrea." "Erm, honestly, they all want to move on and to leave the camps, they don't want to stay in the camps." "Most of them are young and they're educated and they just aspire to get to Europe and seek for a better future." "And the motive behind this escalating migration began to emerge." " How long have you been here for?" " Two months." " Two months?" "What was your job in Eritrea?" "SOMEBODY TRANSLATES" "And how long were you in the military?" " 10 years." " 10 years?" "!" " Yeah." "In Eritrea, military conscription starts at 18 and has no definite end date." "It's what drives so many teenagers to leave their parents and embark on this life-or-death journey." "What made you leave?" "Why did you want to come here?" "Tell me how long some people are in the military in Eritrea." "More than 10 years, at least. 30 years, 20 years." "How old are you?" "And just tell me why did you both leave Eritrea?" "Where do you want to go and live?" "Where do you two want to go, ultimately?" " Europe." " Where in Europe?" " Switzerland." " Switzerland?" "And you?" " England." " England?" "Again and again, the same grim story - endless military conscription, which turns into agricultural work and factory shifts." "Forced labour for the state in all but name." "Even when I used to go to school, the teacher tells you," ""You have to study." You say, "I'm not going to study," ""because I know tomorrow I'm going to be in the army."" "That's why." "Hello." "How are you?" "'Sudan's border with Eritrea is the length of England.'" "And the Sudanese struggle to hold the line against the drivers, the desert guides and the middlemen, who smuggle goods and people across it." "They might look like an army unit, but these are police and it's amazing that it's such a serious issue, the border patrols here and trafficking and smugglers, that 30% of police time is spent dealing with it." "Entire villages have grown up to support this trade and, if confronted, the people traffickers push back with extreme violence." "TRANSLATION:" "We have so many who have been killed fighting against them." "And so many injured fighting against the trade." "We have lost so many cars during incidents, when we're chasing after them." "We are continuing to spend and when this spending will end, we don't know." "But we have been spending for a long time." "Does it anger you that this really is Europe's problem?" "These people don't want to stay in Sudan, they want to move on through." "TRANSLATION:" "They are not really aiming for Sudan, it's Europe's problem." "But Sudan has to deal with it." "And the problem is taking on a new and disturbing dimension." "What they're seeing at the camp in Sudan can be summed up simply - ever more people, ever younger." "Many are unaccompanied children, who haven't even reached their teens." "The UNHCR allowed us to film as long as we protect their identity." "Some will have been evacuated by their parents, preferring them here than facing the bleak certainties of home." "How many of you walked here?" "Did you walk here from Eritrea?" "MAN TRANSLATES If you walked here..." "OK." "Some of you may have already experienced some difficulties coming to Sudan, when you were crossing the border." "In the past, competing tribal groups have entered the camp, searching for human cargo." "Some migrants have been kidnapped, tortured, and held hostage by gangs demanding ransoms from their families." "Vulnerable people treated as mere commodities." " How old are you?" "TRANSLATOR:" " 10 years old." "10 years old?" "!" "And you again?" " Eight years old." " And this guy?" " Huh?" "Seven years old." " Seven years old." "That's so young." "That's so young." "Youngsters who plan to continue will leave here with older siblings or family friends." "It may cost them up to 5,000 to get all the way to Europe." "Can we ask a few people?" "Where are you planning to go?" "HE TRANSLATES" "It's OK." " England." " England." "OK." "They move on from here, some via Khartoum, where they might find work to help pay their passage." "Others simply cross the vast, open plains, all moving northwards into the Sahara..." "..and Libya, where this is what they face." "Thousands of square kilometres of desert." "They cross it in stages, sometimes in trucks, partly on foot." "This is what we filmed some years ago." "The human traffic this way is heavier now, and back then I saw something of the human cost." "A walking man's life expectancy in this heat can be measured in hours." "Well... ..they say it's quite fresh, about two weeks old, something like that, and it's..." "He seems to have made some attempt to cover his face from the sun in the end." "And, you know, the terrible thing is that just beyond the mound of rocks in front of him, about 4km away, is an oasis." "He was that close to water." "No-one knows the death toll here, but it could be as high as those that die at sea." "Last year, that was nearly 4,000." "Libya, you know, I cross the desert in five days." "Because maybe my mum, every time, prays for me." "That's why I started my trip." "A lot of people travelling this route," " many people die in the desert." " Yes." "I can't say nothing about that, because everything is by the hand of God." "After the desert, they head north to the Libyan coast and the Mediterranean Sea - the final gateway to Europe." "Lybia's descent into lawlessness means the traffickers can operate more freely." "This has worrying security implications." "Because there are reports that Islamic extremists are trying to use these routes to gain access to Europe." "The road leads to Zuwarah beach, a notorious departure point, where our 15-year-old Eritrean boarded his boat." "When I see the sea, I just was happy and a little bit scared." "And I just moved fast on the boat." "I was with my friend, we were sitting and seeing people praying, crying." "We were so young when we started." "It's 180 miles from here to the Italian island of Lampedusa, the closest European soil, and a little further to Sicily." "This is the main sea corridor for the migrants coming out of North Africa and into the coast of Sicily." "There've always been unaccompanied children on these boats, but the numbers are really increasing." "And we've discovered a new and significant twist - some of the children are no longer merely passengers on the boats, they're being recruited by the people smugglers and becoming members of their gangs." "On the southern coast of Sicily," "I meet a 15-year-old boy who travelled from sub-Saharan Africa, heading for Europe." "He asked us to hide his identity." "When he reached the Libyan coast, he was targeted by a gang of people traffickers and things took an unexpected turn." "SPOKEN FRENCH IN TRANSLATION:" "'It was difficult because when I arrived in Libya I had no money." "'There was war." "Lots of problems." "'It was very difficult to get anything to eat." "'No work because there's no government." "'Everyone now has become a trafficker." "'When I went to Tripoli, I wanted to get to Italy 'but I didn't have any money." "'Now there are lots of people there who are traffickers, 'and they took my documents." "The traffickers caused all my problems." "'I couldn't get here because they said, "No, without money."'" "They told him there was only one way to progress." "'The only solution was for me to captain a boat." "'That would help me." "'I said, "I don't know how to do it but I can learn."" "'It took a week to learn how to do things at sea." "'A week.'" "The passengers were loaded on board, their lives in the hands of a 15-year-old boy who was now a people smuggler himself." "So, how many people were in your boat?" "'274 people.'" "For the traffickers, the attraction is that they never have to leave the Libyan coast." "All the risk is with a 15-year-old and his passengers." " SAT NAV:" " 'After two miles, take the exit," "'SS194...'" "Further along the coast of Sicily, we learned of another teenage people smuggler who'd been coerced into a gang shipping people across the Med from Egypt." "A crossing three times longer than from Libya." "He was 16 when he set sail in a wooden fishing boat with 170 migrants on board." "He too wants to keep his identity hidden." "What did they say to you, the people traffickers?" "IN TRANSLATION:" "'When they got on my boat, I asked the captain, "Why?"" "'and then he explained what was going on.'" "You were only 16 at the time, weren't you?" "If you'd have said, "No, I don't want to get involved,"" "what would've happened?" "'They would've hurt me." "'Thrown me into the sea." "'Or tied me to the boat.'" "Were people saying," ""What do we do if it sinks? "We could all die"?" "'They got scared when the weather was bad." "'For two days, we were hit by storms.'" "Because he's a juvenile, he escaped a prison sentence for people smuggling." "Now, he lives in a hostel in Chiaramonte Gulfi with other refugees, many of them minors." "This part of Italy takes the brunt of migrant traffic into Europe." "In this small town alone, one in eight of the population are migrants." "Has the age that you're seeing of children coming here to Italy, has the age reduced at all?" "TRANSLATION FROM ITALIAN:" "'Yes, it has." "'At first, they were mostly 16, 17 years old." "'Nowadays we have a great number of '12- and 13-year-old children coming over.'" "When child migrants arrive on these shores unaccompanied from Africa, what are your obligations?" "'The unaccompanied child migrants 'can't be rejected in Italy by law." "'In as much as they're minors, they are utterly protected 'and helped to integrate into Italian society.'" "BELLS TOLL" "That message, that unaccompanied minors who make it will be integrated into Europe, has been fed back down the line, encouraging every younger migrants to take the trip." "The record numbers rescued on the Med last year, came during a period of sea patrols on an unprecedented scale." "The Italian navy's Mare Nostrum, a search and rescue operation across the Med, saved more than 160,000 lives." "But governments across the EU decided it was unintentionally encouraging migrants to have a go, in the expectation of a swift rescue." "So it was scrapped... to make way for a more limited operation with ships patrolling closer to EU borders, run by the EU border agency" " Frontex." "The rollback was supported unanimously by EU governments, including the UK, which wants to rebalance the efforts towards stopping migrants leaving in the first place." "But it's controversial because it's happening as migrant traffic reaches an all-time high." "People smuggling across the Mediterranean used to happen seasonally, mainly in the summer months, when the seas were calm and the weather warm." "But such is the demand for this route into Europe that the people smugglers have thought of a new tactic which allows them to get people across even in the depths of winter." "Earlier this year, the Frontex crew found something extraordinary." "A cargo vessel listing in rough seas, travelling quickly but with no sign of people on board." "Shortly after we arrived, we saw the lights went off." "They came on again, and then it was completely dead." "It's always kind of weird to come to a ship that has no lights and looks..." "looks empty." "I never thought I would see anything like this." "When we saw all the people... it's hard to put it in words." "It was a ghost ship - no captain, no crew - travelling on autopilot with 360 passengers, some locked in livestock pens." "One in five of them were children." "Some just babies." "Our priority are the children, number one, two and three." "That's what we always attend first." "Just to..." "Small children don't have so much resistance to hypothermia and dehydration." "Frontex towed the Ezadeen to southern Italy." "Those on board were mainly Syrians with the money to escape the conflict." "Entire families looking for safety, most will receive asylum." "It's believed the people smugglers behind this trip pocketed nearly £2 million." "Syria has now overtaken Eritrea in the numbers fleeing to Europe." "And now, at this time of peak demand, questions persist about Europe's obligation to the world's needy." "The EU is not responding at the level, the scale of the crisis." "It's quite surprising to us that the EU cannot respond with a stronger solidarity, with a stronger humanity, and with a stronger strategy." "We need a proper solution from the European Union to save lives in the Mediterranean." "As we approach spring - the traditional start of the migration season - more solutions are needed as this escalates into the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War."