Children are our Future
Millions of children are on the move across international borders, fleeing violence and conflict, disaster or poverty, in pursuit of a better life. Hundreds of thousands move on their own. When they encounter few opportunities to move legally, children resort to dangerous routes and engage smugglers to help them cross borders. Serious gaps in the laws, policies and services meant to protect children on the move further leave them bereft of protection and care. Deprived, unprotected, and often alone, children on the move can become easy prey for traffickers and others who abuse and exploit them.
Children and their parents migrate to escape violence, armed conflict and persecution; the ravages of climate change and natural disasters; poverty and inequality and to pursue their aspirations for a better life. Their reasons for migrating may evolve and overlap. Migration can be a way to exercise agency and cope with drastically constrained choices, and it can bring benefits to those who undertake it, and to the societies they leave and join.
Prolonged journeys compound the risks for children. The efforts of some States to restrict migration are a significant contributing factor. When borders close or when the wait to join their families drags on, children find themselves stuck in a state of limbo that drains their limited psychological resources, exacerbates deprivations and can make them increasingly desperate to move on. States can also cause great harm when children are detained or relegated to overcrowded shelters with inadequate protection from abuse, or when they are deported to face the very dangers they risked their lives to escape. When children encounter barriers that keep them from migrating, they resort to irregular channels and the dangerous routes. Many are well aware of the risks, but they weigh these risks against those they face in their countries of origin, or wherever they might be stuck along the way.
Children Left to Fall Through the Cracks
When the world’s States ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), as nearly all of them have done, they committed to respect and ensure the rights of “each child within their jurisdiction, without discrimination of any kind.” This means that a refugee or migrant child, whatever her or his legal status and whether newly arrived, seeking to stay or just passing through, has the same rights as any other child within a country’s borders.
In spite of this commitment, States are not living up to their responsibilities to protect children and manage migration collectively, whether because of a lack of resources, capacities or political will. The greatest share of responsibility falls on developing countries that are ill-equipped to provide protection, while wealthier countries take measures to reinforce their borders and stop people from arriving on their shores.
Where States fail to agree on how to share the responsibility for managing migration, children bear the brunt of the consequences. When children on the move are left unprotected, the consequences for their long-term development can be dire. Violence, abuse and exploitation can compromise children’s physical and mental health and make it harder for them to learn, which can curtail their opportunities for the future.
Migrant smuggling enterprises thrive around the world, especially where border enforcement regimes are strict, opportunities for legal passage are few, and families and children are eager, or desperate, to leave.
As large numbers of people move by any means they can, many governments have responded with restrictive measures and strong rhetoric, often against a backdrop of rising xenophobia and intensely politicized debates. Popular fears over newcomers changing the culture, committing crimes and competing for jobs and benefits complicate efforts to integrate refugee and migrant children, who very much depends on people’s willingness to welcome them. The responses from some States, designed to demonstrate control over their borders and “toughness” on immigrants, contribute to pushing children underground. This stokes demand for smugglers to help children cross borders and remain under the radar. Smugglers catering to migrants in Central America tend to offer a package deal that includes on average three attempts to cross the Mexico-United States border.
Children are often detained as a step towards deportation. In 2016, more than 85 % of the unaccompanied Central American migrant children and adolescents apprehended in Mexico were sent back to their countries.
When children moving on their own are intercepted on a State’s territory, they should be referred to a family or community-based care or shelter for children while their immigration status is being resolved.
This highly abridged report garnered from the UNICEF “A Child is a Child” story is meant to illuminate some of the problems facing the migrant children from Central America and the suffering experienced along the long trek in reaching the USA border. The Spirit of Humanity would implore the citizens of America to treat all children as their own. Our benevolence and compassion towards the innocent should define who we are as Good Humans and Americans.
