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» Human Rights Watch -The Week in Rights - July 04, 2013
The Lost Boys—Arif’s Story
© Human Rights Watch As told by Alice Farmer, children's rights researcher
I met Arif, a 16-year-old boy from Afghanistan, in a Pizza Hut near Jakarta, Indonesia. He held himself with confidence, dressed in a pressed, white t-shirt, but beneath the exterior I saw a boy who lived thousands of miles away from his family, who had risked his life repeatedly for safety and opportunity.
His story began when, at 15, he borrowed $7,000 from his oldest brother to hire smugglers to sneak him out of Afghanistan and into Indonesia. He ultimately planned to join his brother in Australia where he could claim asylum, go to school and build a new life. Over pizza, Arif told me about his first attempt to reach Australia by boat. This part of his story would not go well, I knew. Inevitably, the stories I hear from so many of the boys I interview – my boys, as I think of them – involve harrowing events.
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