Nearly half of all refugees are children, and almost one in three children living outside their country of birth is a refugee.Emily Garin, Jan Beise, Lucia Hug, and Danzhen You. 2016. "Uprooted: The Growing Crisis for Refugee and Migrant Children." UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/videoaudio/PDFs/Uprooted.pdf . 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 outbreaksToole, Michael J., and Ronald J. Waldman. "The public health aspects of complex emergencies and refugee situations." Annual review of public health 18, no. 1 (1997): 283-312. and long-term psychological trauma,Kaplan, Ida. "Effects of trauma and the refugee experience on psychological assessment processes and interpretation." Australian Psychologist 44, no. 1 (2009): 6-15. inadequate access to water and sanitation,Schweitzer, Robert D., Mark Brough, Lyn Vromans, and Mary Asic-Kobe. "Mental health of newly arrived Burmese refugees in Australia: contributions of pre-migration and post-migration experience." Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 45, no. 4 (2011): 299-307. nutritious food,Hamilton, Carolyn, Kirsten Anderson, Ruth Barnes, and Kamena Dorling. "Administrative detention of children: a global report." Fondo de las Naciones Unidas para la Infancia, Nueva York (2011). health care and regular vaccination schedules. Refugee children, particularly those without documentation and those who travel alone, are also vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.Vandenhole, Wouter, Ellen Desmet, Didier Reynaert, and Sara Lembrechts, eds. Routledge international handbook of children's rights studies. Routledge, 2015. 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.Bush, Kenneth David, and Diana Saltarelli. "The two faces of education in ethnic conflict." (2000). 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.Crock, Mary. Seeking asylum alone: A study of Australian law, policy and practice regarding unaccompanied and separated children. Federation Press, 2006. Such threats to safety and well-being are amplified for refugee children with disabilities.Reilly, Rachael. "Disabilities among refugees and conflict-affected populations." Forced Migration Review 35 (2010): 8. 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.
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:UNICEF. "Convention on the Rights of the Child." Child Labor (1989): 8. the principle of non-discrimination (Article 2) best interests of the child (Article 3) right to life and survival and development (Article 6) the right to child participation (Article 12) 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.Steinbock, Daniel J. "The refugee definition as law: issues of interpretation." Refugee Rights and Realities: Evolving International Concepts and Regimes (1999): 13-39. 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."Refugee Status Determination: Identifying Who Is a Refugee." 2005. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). South Africa has granted refugee status to Mozambicans and Zimbabweans following the collapse of their home countries' economies.Bloch, Joanne. I am an African: stories of young refugees in South Africa. New Africa Books, 2007.
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: the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children;UN General Assembly. "Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations convention against transnational organized crime." GA res 55 (2000): 25. the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air.UN General Assembly. "Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime." (2000).
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 (pre-migration), transit experiences (transmigration), and host country experiences (post-migration).Hamilton, Richard J., and Dennis Moore, eds. Educational interventions for refugee children: Theoretical perspectives and implementing best practice. Psychology Press, 2004.Lustig, Stuart L., Maryam Kia-Keating, Wanda Grant Knight, Paul Geltman, Heidi Ellis, J. David Kinzie, Terence Keane, and Glenn N. Saxe. "Review of child and adolescent refugee mental health." Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 43, no. 1 (2004): 24-36.Bhugra, Dinesh, Susham Gupta, Kamaldeep Bhui, T. O. M. Craig, Nisha Dogra, J. David Ingleby, James Kirkbride et al. "WPA guidance on mental health and mental health care in migrants." World Psychiatry 10, no. 1 (2011): 2-10. 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.Moore, Will H., and Stephen M. Shellman. "Refugee or internally displaced person? To where should one flee?." Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 5 (2006): 599-622. 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.Achvarina, Vera, and Simon F. Reich. "No place to hide: Refugees, displaced persons, and the recruitment of child soldiers." International Security 31, no. 1 (2006): 127-164. 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.Davies, Susanna, and Carol Batchelor. "Resettlement as a protection tool for refugee children." Forced Migration Review 54 (2017): 38. 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.Rasmussen, Andrew, Basila Katoni, Allen S. Keller, and John Wilkinson. "Posttraumatic idioms of distress among Darfur refugees: Hozun and Majnun." Transcultural Psychiatry 48, no. 4 (2011): 392-415. 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."Central America and Mexico Unaccompanied Child Migration Situation Report No. 1." 2014. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 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."Unaccompanied Children Leaving Central America and Mexico and the Need for International Protection." 2014. Washington, DC: UNHCR.