The child refugee

Humanity is failing its children. In a year when images of children from war-torn Syria have captured global sympathy, surprising little has been done to make the lives of children in conflict areas more tolerable. According to a Unicef report, titled ‘Uprooted’, almost 50 million children throughout the world have been displaced from their countries by war, violence or persecution; 28 million of them have been displaced by violence. Ten million children around the world have been registered as refugees, one million as asylum seekers while around 17 million children are displaced within their own countries. Over the last decade, the number of displaced children has doubled.

There is no doubt that children have become the face of the global refugee crisis. The Unicef report reminds countries of their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Children to fulfil their duties towards any and all children who are resident within their territories, regardless of their background or migration status. One of the most astonishing parts of the report is that it notes that around 21 percent of all child migrants live in Mexico, the US or Canada. The US joins Somalia in the list of the only two countries that have not ratified the UN convention on child rights. The treatment of displaced children in the US has come under severe criticism from human rights officials. Somehow, children are supposed to represent themselves in immigration court in the US without a lawyer. The US has shown similar callousness on the issue of Syrian refugees, with only 10,000 Syrians accepted since last year. Refugee children also face obstacles in building a life if and when conflicts end. The UNHCR has noted that refugee children are five times less likely to be enrolled in school than non-refugee children. The situation is unacceptable. In Pakistan, Unicef has noted that 24 million children remain out of school, with the country ranking among the 10 countries where the issue of out of school children is an emergency. This is despite the right to education being recognised as a fundamental right in Pakistan in 2010. The truth is that we have failed to provide a world that ensures dignity to our children, and we continue to shy away from our duties to do so.