Refugee children


Nearly half of all refugees are children, and almost one in three children living outside their country of birth is a refugee. These numbers encompass children whose refugee status has been formally confirmed, as well as children in refugee-like situations.
In addition to facing the direct threat of violence resulting from conflict, forcibly displaced children also face various health risks, including: disease outbreaks and long-term psychological trauma, inadequate access to water and sanitation, nutritious food, health care and regular vaccination schedules. Refugee children, particularly those without documentation and those who travel alone, are also vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Although many communities around the world have welcomed them, forcibly displaced children and their families often face discrimination, poverty, and social marginalization in their home, transit, and destination countries. Language barriers and legal barriers in transit and destination countries often bar refugee children and their families from accessing education, healthcare, social protection, and other services. Many countries of destination also lack intercultural supports and policies for social integration. Such threats to safety and well-being are amplified for refugee children with disabilities.  Studies done by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees show that only half of all refugee children that are elementary school-aged are able to access schooling. Similarly, amongst secondary school-aged children, only 22 percent of children can access schooling. Unfortunately, this culminates in a rate of access to higher education of only one percent amongst all refugees. Additionally, North American schools often do not have the resources needed to support refugee children. Refugee children often have to handle discrimination, low socioeconomic status, have no family, or come to a setting that clashes with their cultural beliefs leading to behavioral issues teachers are not always prepared for. Extracurricular resources provided to refugee children include supplementary curriculum enrichment resources, videos for the goal or increasing parent and school awareness, informational leaflets and handbooks, as well as ICT based resources, which serve to benefit refugee involvement in the school.
File:Schnorr von Carolsfeld Bibel in Bildern 1860 171.png|thumbnail|This woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 1860 depicts Jesus as a refugee child fleeing the Massacre of the Innocents.

Legal protection

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, includes four articles that are particularly relevant to children involved in or affected by forced displacement:
States Parties to the Convention are obliged to uphold the above articles, regardless of a child's migration status. As of November 2005, a total of 192 countries have become States Parties to the Convention. Somalia and the United States are the only two countries that have not ratified it.
The United Nations 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees is a comprehensive and rigid legal code regarding the rights of refugees at an international level and it also defines under which conditions a person should be considered as a refugee and thus be given these rights. The Convention provides protection to forcibly displaced persons who have experienced persecution or torture in their home countries. For countries that have ratified it, the Convention often serves as the primary basis for refugee status determination, but some countries also utilize other refugee definitions, thus, have granted refugee status not based exclusively on persecution. For instance, the African Union has agreed on a definition at the 1969 Refugee Convention, that also accommodates people affected by external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, and events seriously disturbing public order. South Africa has granted refugee status to Mozambicans and Zimbabweans following the collapse of their home countries' economies.
Other international legal tools for the protection refugee children include two of the Protocols supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime which reference child migration:
Additionally the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families covers the rights of the children of migrant workers in both regular and irregular situations during the entire migration process.

Stages of the refugee experience

Refugee experiences can be categorized into three stages of migration: home country experiences, transit experiences, and host country experiences. However, the large majority of refugees do not travel into new host countries, but remain in the transmigration stage, living in refugee camps or urban centres waiting to be able to return home.

Home country experiences (pre-migration)

The pre-migration stage refers to home country experiences leading up to and including the decision to flee. Pre-migration experiences include the challenges and threats children face that drive them to seek refuge in another country. Refugee children migrate, either with their families or unaccompanied, due to fear of persecution on the premise of membership of a particular social group, or due to the threat of forced marriage, forced labor, or conscription into armed forces. Others may leave to escape famine or in order to ensure the safety and security of themselves and their families from the destruction of war or internal conflict.
A 2016 report by UNICEF found that, by the end of 2015, five years of open conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic had forced 4.9 million Syrians out of the country, half of which were children. The same report found that, by the end of 2015, more than ten years of armed conflict in Afghanistan had forced 2.7 million Afghans beyond the country's borders; half of the refugees from Afghanistan were children. During times of war, in addition to being exposed to violence, many children are abducted and forced to become soldiers. According to an estimate, 12,000 refugee children have been recruited into armed groups within South Sudan. War itself often becomes a part of the child's identity, making reintegration difficult once he or she is removed from the unstable environment.
Examples of children's pre-migration experiences:
  • Some Sudanese refugee children reported that they had either experienced personally or witnessed potentially traumatic events prior to departure from their home country, during attacks by the Sudanese military in Darfur. These events include instances of sexual violence, as well as of individuals being beaten, shot, bound, stabbed, strangled, drowned, and kidnapped.
  • Some Burmese refugee children in Australia were found to have undergone severe pre-migration traumas, including the lack of food, water, and shelter, forced separation from family members, murder of family or friends, kidnappings, sexual abuse, and torture.
  • In 2014 the President of Honduras testified in front of the United States Congress that more than three-quarters of unaccompanied child migrants from Honduras came from the country's most violent cities. In fact, 58 percent of 404 unaccompanied and separated children interviewed by the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, about their journey to the United States indicated that they had been forcibly displaced from their homes because they had either been harmed or were under threat of harm.
In general, children may also cross borders for economic reasons, such as to escape poverty and social deprivation, or some children may do so to join other family members already settled in another State. But it is the involuntary nature of refugees' departure that distinguishes them from other migrant groups who have not undergone forced displacement. Refugees, and even more so their children, are neither psychologically nor pragmatically prepared for the rapid movement and transition resulting from events outside their control. Any direct or witnessed forms of violence and sexual abuse may characterize refugee children's pre-migration experiences.

Transit experiences (transmigration)

The transmigration period is characterized by the physical relocation of refugees. This process includes the journey between home countries and host countries and often involves time spent in a refugee camp. Children may experience arrest, detention, sexual assault, and torture during their translocation to the host country. Children, particularly those who travel on their own or become separated from their families, are likely to face various forms of violence and exploitation throughout the transmigration period. The experience of traveling from one country to another is much more difficult for women and children, because they are more vulnerable to assaults and exploitation by people they encounter at the border and in refugee camps.

Trafficking

, in which a smuggler illegally moves a migrant into another country, is a pervasive issue for children travelling both with and without their families. While fleeing their country of origin, many unaccompanied children end up travelling with traffickers who may attempt to exploit them as workers. Including adults, sex trafficking is more prevalent in Europe and Central Asia, whereas in East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific labour trafficking is more prevalent.
Many unaccompanied children fleeing from conflict zones in Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, China, Afghanistan or Sri Lanka are forced into sexual exploitation. Especially vulnerable groups include girls belonging to single-parent households, unaccompanied children, children from child-headed households, orphans, girls who were street traders, and girls whose mothers were street traders. While refugee boys have been identified as the main victims of exploitation in the labor market, refugee girls aged between 13 and 18 have been the main targets of sexual exploitation. In particular, the number of young Nigerian women and girls brought into Italy for exploitation has been increasing: it was reported that 3,529 Nigerian women, among them underage girls, arrived by sea between January and June 2016. Once they reached Italy, these girls worked under conditions of slavery, for periods typically ranging from three to seven years.