"The authorities have not fully taken into account exactly how many people lived in camp and so the process of moving people out and dismantling their homes at the same time in one week has caused danger to minors who have been left to sleep on the streets," Laura Campbell said.
She added that volunteers working in Calais had an accurate census on the number of refugees, but it was not taken into consideration by the authorities.
"The authorities wrote their own census, missing quite a number of minors before the evictions started, many were not approached and had no idea who the people were in camp," the charity representative said.
According to data by Help Refugees and L’Auberge des Migrants, on the eve of the Calais demolition that started on Monday, the number of migrants there reached 8,143, with 1,496 of them being mostly unaccompanied minors.
She added that the British side that pledged to take in about half of the unaccompanied minors also underestimated how many people would need accommodation.
"Unaccompanied minors could have started to be moved to the UK under the Dubs amendment from May. Unaccompanied minors with family in the UK have always had a legal right to reunification through the Dublin regulation," she stressed, referring to the landmark amendment named after Lord Alf Dubs, which was passed by the House of Commons in May, committing the British government to relocate vulnerable child refugees in France, Italy and Greece "as soon as possible."
Government officials in the region say that more than 6,000 people had been moved out of the squalid camp and transferred to towns throughout France, but according to Dave King from Jungle Canopy, who is in Calais protecting the children, around 100 minors have still been in Calais on Friday.
The United Kingdom, which started to take first child migrants less than two weeks ago, so far has admitted 274 unaccompanied minors from Calais, according to the latest data by the French Interior Ministry.
