Across the globe, nearly 50 million children have been uprooted, with 28 million fleeing brutal conflict and millions more escaping extreme poverty. This figure, provided by UNICEF includes millions of children caught in wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the South Sudan — in more than a dozen countries. This figure also includes children driven from their homes by violence or deprivation and forced to make difficult and dangerous journeys abroad, children who are out of school and don’t know when they might return. Children that should be in school, focusing on their studies, their futures, and not worrying about staying alive another day, worrying whether or not someone will come in and take their family away from them, worrying will a bomb drop on their house, just like how it happened to their neighbors.
The child refugee crisis is one of the worst humanitarian emergencies the world has ever seen, an emergency that cannot wait.
As a young child, my mother described to me the horrors that she saw, growing up in Bosnia and Herzegovina, seeing children being separated from their parents and siblings to be brought to safer counties during the collapse of Yugoslavia. I prayed I would never experience anything so terrifying, living in danger, not knowing if I will live another day.
Children are being smuggled through waterways and broken roads by smugglers that the
Terrorist groups are sponsoring. ISIS and Boko Haram are paying the smugglers’ fees of child refugees is in a desperate attempt to attract new recruits, according to a report highlighting the potential vulnerability of unaccompanied minors to radicalisation. Officials for the groups are promising broken families that are victims of the ongoing conflicts all over the globe that if they pay a certain fee, they will get their child to safety, asylum in a safe country such as Serbia or Greece. In a report, from Quilliam, also says that an estimated 88,300 unaccompanied children – identified by the EU statistics agency Eurostat as having gone missing – were at risk of being put through the illegal systems of child-trafficking, extremism and modern slavery.
Another issue facing children that is forcing them to turn into refugees is illness. Prior to the current conflict in Syria, immunization rates in the country were among the highest in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. More than 90% of Syrian children were vaccinated against diseases like measles and polio. Last year, however, Syria saw the resurgence in the outbreak of measles and pertussis. In 2013, the country experienced a polio outbreak that paralyzed 35 children and spread to Iraq. Its containment required vaccinating more than 25 million children, many who were living in conflict zones over 8 countries and there was no incident of a child being paralyzed by polio since the 1990s. The main cause of the disease’s’ resurgence can be attributed to war, according to the World Health Organization. Since the fighting in Syria began almost 5 years ago, half of the health workers have left the country to safer grounds; medicine and medical supplies are scarce and many health facilities have fallen into disrepair. As a result, many children have not been immunized. In Yemen, over 7 million children need desperate medical attention but cannot receive it.
In addition, millions of refugee children are missing school every day. One in four in children in 22 conflict zones around the world are currently out of school on a daily basis. That adds up to nearly 24 million of the 109.2 million children of primary and secondary school age (6-15) in those regions according to a new report from UNICEF. Generations of children living in conflict will grow up without the skills they need to contribute to their countries and economies, exacerbating the already desperate situation for millions of children and their families. And remember, a refugee status can typically last anywhere from 12-14 years, which is nearly a child’s entire school lifetime. Some children might not ever step foot in a education centre as a youth.
Conflict has left many parts of the world in fear, in the dark, creating pain and darkness in the souls of millions of people, including children. Children are desperate for freedom… They want to be with their friends and family, they want to learn and they want to have a childhood.
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