Almost 50 million children throughout the world are “uprooted,” forcibly displaced from their home countries by war, violence or persecution, the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday.
“Indelible images of individual children — Aylan Kurdi’s small body washed up on a beach after drowning at sea or Omran Daqneesh’s stunned and bloody face as he sat in an ambulance after his home was destroyed — have shocked the world,” UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake said in a statement.
“But each picture, each girl or boy, represents many millions of children in danger — and this demands that our compassion for the individual children we see be matched with action for all children,” he added.
In its analysis of global data, UNICEF found that 28 million of those children were displaced by violence and conflict, including 10 million child refugees.
There were also 1 million asylum seekers whose refugee status is pending and approximately 17 million children displaced within their own countries lacking access to humanitarian aid and critical services.
About 20 million other children have left their homes for various reasons, including gang violence or extreme poverty.
“Many are at particular risk of abuse and detention, because they have no documentation, have uncertain legal status and there is no systematic tracking and monitoring of their well-being — children falling through the cracks,” UNICEF said.
Children are also increasingly crossing borders on their own: More than 100,000 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in 78 countries last year, tripling 2014’s numbers.
UNICEF pointed to children accounting for a “disproportionate and growing proportion” of people seeking refuge outside their birth countries.
Children make up about one-third of the world’s population, but about half of all refugees.
Last year, about 45 percent of child refugees under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ care came from Syria and Afghanistan.
UNICEF urged authorities to end the detention of children migrating or seeking refugee status, abstain from separating families, allow child refugees and migrants access to health services and to promote measure that combat xenophobia, discrimination and marginalization.
The international body is to take up the issue of migration in two meetings late this month on the sidelines of this year’s UN General Assembly.
“We’d like to see some clear commitments and practical measures,” UNICEF deputy executive director Justin Forsyth told journalists in New York. “The burden sharing of this crisis is not fair: The greatest burden is supported by neighboring countries or the poorest countries.”
Forsyth said the upcoming summits are “not enough to solve the problem,” but they remain “critical.”
“It is a chance to get the world to look at this crisis,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in