How unaccompanied minor migrants navigate war, displacement, and uncertain futures in Lithuania
Journalists Austėja Pūraitė and Audra Skuodaitė report from Lithuania’s Rukla Reception Centre, tracing the fragile and unstable lives of unaccompanied minor migrants arriving at Europe’s eastern edge. Through close observation and intimate encounters, their piece for NARA, a Lithuanian news platform, shows Rukla not as a destination but as a pause. A holding space where childhood and uncertainty coexist.
The report opens inside the centre itself, during a music workshop run by an arts organisation. Teenagers from Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, and Afghanistan take turns rapping and improvising in multiple languages. The scene establishes a recurring theme. Even in transit, these young people are not only migrants or victims but teenagers, experimenting with voice, fashion, and selfhood.
One of them is Amin, a 17-year-old from Sudan, whose story anchors the article. Amin fled escalating civil war in western Sudan, leaving behind his mother and younger brother. He has not heard from them in months. After travelling through the UAE and Russia, he attempted to cross into the EU via Belarus and Latvia, where he says he was beaten by border guards despite showing his passport. Now in Rukla, he awaits an asylum decision that may take months.
Through Amin’s phone, the journalists show how distant wars remain present. Instagram videos of executions in al-Fashir blur into daily conversation. Amin speaks plainly about armed groups forcing people to choose sides, about hunger used as a weapon, about fear becoming normalised.
The reporting then widens beyond Amin. Since May 2025, there has been a sharp rise in unaccompanied minors arriving at Rukla, sometimes as many as 15 per day. Most come from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Sudan. One of the several photos accompanying the report (also by Skuodaitė), shows a map of the world pinned with flags of the country of origin of Rukla’s current residents, stretching as far as Cuba, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Many minors arrive at Rukla exhausted, injured, or malnourished after days in forests along the Belarusian border. NGOs have documented systematic violence at the EU’s eastern frontier: beatings, pushbacks, confiscated phones, and deaths that go unrecorded. One of the female workers at the centre, Kristina, says she is often referred to by the minors as “mother”.
Pūraitė and Skuodaitė repeatedly return to an atmosphere of transitoriness. Teenagers appear, speak – then vanish. Ahmed from Somalia plans to stay in Lithuania; he disappears the following week. The journalists speak to Yuusuf, 15, also from Somalia, who fled daily violence at home and corruption at the hands of police; the next time they are in touch with the centre, he’s gone. Abel, from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, arrives on crutches after breaking his leg while running through the forest. Later, he dances, laughs, posts TikToks, and quietly moves on, swapping Lithuanian flags for Polish ones on his social media.
Minors who arrive in Rukla having crossed the border illegally are free to leave the centre. (Unlike adults, who in a similar situation would be detained). Social workers regularly retrieve them from borders with Poland, joking that they provide “taxi services,” even as the underlying risk is clear. Across Europe, tens of thousands of migrant children have gone missing after arrival, making unaccompanied minors particularly vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation.
By the end, Rukla feels emptied again. Only a few minors remain, but the flow of arrivals may resume at any moment. The teenagers’ faces, styles, languages, and plans keep changing, even as the structures governing their movement remain rigid.
This original source article ‘Nuolat besikeičiantys paauglių veidai Rukloje by Austėja Pūraitė and Audra Skuodaitė’ was published in Lithuanian in NARA on 13 December, 2025.
It is available here.
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