The bloody cost of the cocaine boom

Europe's appetite for the drug is surging like never before. But the North African children forced to service the trade face a brutal reality of beatings, rape and torture

- Mark Townsend

Maddalena Chiarenza never knows what state the children will be in when they arrive at her door. She has seen black eyes, missing teeth, a broken jaw. "They suffer such regular violence," said Chiarenza, whose Brussels-based NGO, sos Jeune, cares for unaccompanied Moroccan and Algerian children.

A short walk from the NGO's office near the Eurostar train terminal, groups of north African children are a common sight. Some walk the streets like zombies, after being fed sedatives.

Some children the NGO has cared for have since died; through sickness, murder or suicide; Chiarenza says at least five in the past three years. Another 23 children it has had contact with are in prison, some on drug offences.

On the surface, the plight of these unaccompanied child migrants, and hundreds of others like them throughout Europe, is a testament to the failure of governments across the continent to provide help and assistance to the most vulnerable victims of the global migration crisis. Dig deeper and these children tell a different story, an untold narrative of Europe's growing addiction to cocaine.

A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds, if not thousands, of African children have been trafficked into Europe's booming cocaine trade, small cogs in a criminal industry worth more than $10bn that is transporting vast quantities of the drug from the Andean rainforests to increasing numbers of customers across the continent.

In March, senior police officers met secretly in Brussels. Present were officers from 25 EU countries along with the UK, Europol, the EU border force, the UN refugee agency and the European Commission. On the agenda: the exploitation of unaccompanied African children by international drug syndicates based in western Europe.

"We have evidence that these foreign minors are exploited in large numbers in the EU by OCGS [organised crime groups] involved in drug trafficking," said a police source who was present.