The Most Vulnerable of Refugees

"What's important is that these children on the move are children. And they should be treated as children."
"They deserve to be protected. They need access to services, such as education."
Ted Chaiban, UNICEF director of programs, Geneva

"Children do not bear any responsibility for the bombs and bullets, the gang violence, persecution, the shrivelled crops and low family wages driving them from their homes."
UNICEF report

"The world hears the stories of child refugees one child at a time and the world is able to bring support to that child, but when we talk about millions it provokes incredible outrage and underscores the need to address the growing problem."
Emily Garin, author of Uprooted: The Growing Crisis for Refugee and Migrant Children

"Every child that has suffered, died, is a reminder of this huge challenge that we face. Every one of them deserves our help."

"In some places, like Eritrea and northern Nigeria the children are fleeing violence and conflict -- their parents are almost sending them ahead of them because its safer to flee than it is [to remain] where they are."

"Often parents are judging that their children would be safer to move than to stay put and that's a terrible decision."

"All of these children, whether they're fleeing Central America and gang violence or war in Africa or from Syria are threatened by traffickers and smugglers and they desperately need our protection and our help in getting an education and a future."

Justin Forsyth, deputy executive director, UNICEF

According to figures newly released by UNICEF in a report documenting child refugees, twenty-eight million children have been forced from their homes and countries of origin, as a result of conflict and violence. Refugees include a million asylum-seekers whose status as refugees remains undetermined formally by the United Nations, along with another 17 million who have been displaced from their homes but remain within the borders of their own countries.

Overall, the figure of 41 million refugees who are internally displaced persons remain in their countries of origin, but have fled their homes which are located within active theatres of conflict. Of that total, 7 million are children, internally displaced, within the borders of their countries. The other figure is for refugees and asylum-seekers and that total is 25 million who have fled their countries of origin for reasons of safety and security as well as economic opportunities; of that 25 million, 11 million represent children.

War, violence, poverty, are all crises whose proportions have compelled people to leave their homes and to set out on miserable journeys to find safety for themselves and their families. The topmost drivers of the refugee tide are Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan, along with Pakistan and Iraq. What these countries all have in common is violence, tribal and sectarian both within their borders and cross-border. And what else they all have in common is that all are Muslim-majority countries. As Islam is claimed to be a religion of peace, it is difficult to discern how Islam pacifies its faithful.

The dysfunction within Islam of an overabundance of violence and criminal belligerence against others victimizes those who are unable to protect themselves from the oppression, the threats and the dire living conditions imposed upon them by the powerful among them. A surfeit of dictators and tyrants plagues the world of Islam, where liberal democracy is not viewed as fit company for Islamic values and when those values are on full display we count the victims, the slaughtered and the fleeing. 

 

If refugees do not leave, in hopes of avoiding death, they leave for the prospect of humane living conditions.

UNICEF says 45% of child refugees are from Syria or Afghanistan [Jamal Saidi/Reuters]

According to the report, Syria and Afghanistan can take pride of place in producing fully 45 percent of child refugees. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, another United Nations agency, identifies roughly 11 million Syrians as having been displaced by conflict. This number is inclusive of about 100,000 refugees that have resulted in the past eight days alone, thanks to the bombing of helpless Sunni Syrian civilians by their Shiite Alawite government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Poverty and gang violence also drives children from their homes. An estimated million child asylum-seekers are on their own, travelling unaccompanied by adults, with all the dire dangers that minors travelling without supervision face them on their journeys. They seek asylum in 78 countries, a dramatic increase over the numbers of years before. Risks of drowning at sea during crossings, of malnourishment, of dehydration, of kidnapping, of rape and murder all plague these children on the move.

The UN report addresses the problem of burgeoning child refugees by appealing to the international community to step in and provide protection, education and health services to the children; that governments address the root causes which are contributing to this large-scale migration of the world's most vulnerable. The 'international community' being appealed to is the non-Muslim world of liberal democracies in Oceania, North America and Europe, to foot the UN bills and to absorb greater numbers of mostly Muslim children.

As for the Muslim world which generates these cast-offs whom they care so obviously little about, how will they consider resolving the problems of their inner dysfunction under a religion that is responsible for every facet of daily and communal life, and for harnessing the populations of the oppressed to the yoke of Islamic imperialism that sacrifices humanity for the greater ideal of world domination? They have done such an exceedingly superior job of governing their own benighted lands, and they seek Islamic conquest and dominion over others....