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GHANA WEATHER

London teens sent to Africa to escape knife crime

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Hundreds of British teenagers are being sent by their parents to East Africa to avoid knife crime in the UK, representatives of the Somali community say. Why are they taking this drastic choice?

Some names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.

“In those few years I was doing my A-levels it was tough. Just seeing people being dropped every other day, being stabbed,” Yusuf tells the Victoria Derbyshire programme from his new home in Kenya.

“London’s not the place to be for a teenager.”

Yusuf was born and raised in London but moved to Nairobi after a close friend in his neighbourhood was stabbed to death.

It is a decision an increasing number of parents are taking, for their children’s safety.

Of the 100 people stabbed to death in the UK so far this year, 8% were of Somali heritage, according to the Rise Projects which works with young British Somalis in north London.

Jamal Hassan mentors young men in London, many from Somali families. He explains parents “want to protect that child by all means necessary”.

“If it means that child doesn’t finish school, college, university or he will not have a good job by the time you come for them the future is not really important.

“What’s important is that child’s life.”

One mother who had sent her child to Africa told him she could now sleep at night because she knew any police sirens she heard were not for her son.

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