São Paulo – Nearly half of all children living as refugees in the world come from Syria or Afghanistan. The data relating to 2015 is part of a report released this Wednesday (7) by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
According to the survey, there are nearly 50 million children and teenagers that sought refuge outside their country of hometowns. Out of this group, 28 million left their home due to conflicts or violence.
Currently, one out of 200 children in the world is a refugee. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of refugee children registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) more than doubled.
The country with the most refugees – and the most children refugees – is Turkey. Last year, according to the UNHCR, one in every six registered refugees lived in Turkey. But Lebanon and Jordan have the highest refugee children-to-total refugee ratio in the world. Currently, one in every five Lebanese residents is a refugee.
Unicef stresses the fragility of these children and adolescents, the trauma of violence, the dangers they face on their way finding to asylum, such as drowning, malnutrition and dehydration, the risk of falling the victims of trafficking, kidnapping, sexual violence and murder. In the countries they flee to, they are often the victims of xenophobia and prejudice.
The organization claims that the rate of children and teens among refugees is going up. They are crossing borders by themselves more and more. Last year, over 100,000 unaccompanied children requested asylum in 78 countries, three times as many as in 2014.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani & Gabriel Pomerancblum
