Scale up response to child migrants

Nearly one in every 200 children in the world today is a refugee. Kids now make up about half of all refugees. The stats may not appear as alarming as the ground situation is. Many miseries that the child migrants face are hidden from the view.
Displaced undocumented children face the risk of abuse. A new UNICEF report reveals that over 100,000 minors are crossing the borders and taking perilous, dangerous journeys on their own to seek asylum. When these children are unaccompanied, they become soft targets for human traffickers and smugglers. They are also pounced upon by extremists, who lure them into their trap. The gullible lot also faces detention due to lack of documentation. Their uncertain legal status makes them vulnerable to persecution. There are one million asylum seekers whose refugee status is pending. Worse still, these kids don’t get humanitarian aid — neither health services nor education. Some fall victim to gang violence and live in abject poverty. Even though UNICEF has been appealing for end to detention of refugee kids and urging to give them access to critical services, these children continue to face traumatic experiences and go through terrible hardships that rob them of their innocence.
Xenophobia and bias are also heaped on them. Despite the G20 recently calling for “burden-sharing”, the anti-migrant wave is apparently sweeping Europe, where many child refugees are seeking shelter. Brexit vote was decided on the issue of migration and so was the recent election in Germany where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party had to face a political disappointment. EU’s migrant quota system is in tatters as Hungary and Slovakia have denounced it. In such a scenario, the importance of a coordinated global plan that envisages shared responsibility for child migrants assumes greater significance. The world bodies must mount pressure on the governments to accept and protect these child refugees — whose number right now is 50 million. While taking measures to help them assimilate and integrate with the local community, their potential needs to be developed so that they can contribute economically and constructively to the society.
It is imperative that UN takes up the issue of child refugees in separate sessions in its forthcoming conferences in late September and during the UN General Assembly. The meetings should focus on chalking out programmes to ensure child migrants do not suffer for the reckless actions of the adult world. The governments have to reach a consensus on aid, resettlement and resources to be provided to these kids. International cooperation to save child refugees from discrimination, suffering and neglect is paramount. Today, these migrants are treated in the shabbiest manner and this makes their ordeal more scarry.
Rhetorics and pledges are often made to handle the crisis. But no concrete action has been forthcoming from the world bodies that matter. Even though some countries have opened their arms to embrace child migrants, onus of taking them shouldn’t lie only with the neighbouring countries. The world has to come together and scale up its response to the issue. And while doing so, the underlying source of the problem has to be reached and steps taken to uproot the root cause.