In a recent paper, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants noted: “Given the EU’s share of global resources and wealth of substantive normative standards, recent deaths at sea, the suffering seen at all stages of migration and other human rights issues have to be understood not as the result of some kind of powerlessness, but of political will and policy choices.” This observation applies with particular force to the predictable and severe rights violations suffered by hundreds of thousands of child refugees affected by the current Middle East upheavals. During 2015 alone, an estimated 26,000 unaccompanied children arrived in Europe, while a much larger number, well over 1 million, continue to languish in severely underfunded camps or settlements in or around Syria.
Unlike in previous decades, this child-specific fallout from conflict, violence and ensuing forced migration has been amply brought to recent public attention. It started in the spring and summer of 2014, with relentless images of Central American children crouched on the roofs of speeding trains or huddled in freezing border detention centers as they sought refuge in the southern US.
Evidence of the child-specific global fallout of migration continued, dramatically, with the unforgettable picture of 3-year-old Syrian Aylan Kurdi’s body washed up on the Turkish shoreline. This searing image almost overnight changed the attitude to reception of Syrian refugees in Canada, and drove distress child migration to the top of the European political agenda.
Making it to Europe is only the first step; it is not a guarantee of safety. On Jan. 30, Europol announced that at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees had disappeared after arriving in Europe, many feared to have fallen into the hands of trafficking gangs.
The circumstances of vulnerable child refugees from the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar have also been documented. This religious and ethnic minority, long settled in the western Rakhine region of Myanmar, has faced severe persecution at the hands of the Buddhist majority, resulting both in extreme social and economic marginalization and in pervasive statelessness, a most fundamental denial of the community’s right to legal identity within the country. A pattern of large-scale distress migration has resulted, with Rohingya communities fleeing in search of security elsewhere.
The bleak situation of child refugees en route to a safe destination is one aspect of the unfolding tragedy. Another is the dearth of protective procedures on arrival at their destination. Despite 20 years of near-universal ratification of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children are routinely placed in detention-like facilities while immigration inquiries are pursued, before they have the benefit of social welfare or medical support, and before they have the opportunity to seek legal or counseling advice. This is why Rohingya teenagers spend months in dangerous or exploitative circumstances trying to eke out a living under the control of smugglers in Malaysia, or in detention structures in Indonesia awaiting determination of their claim to asylum without the benefit of schooling or guardianship.
Unaccompanied child migrants may even be worse off, paradoxically, than similarly situated adults. Their claims to asylum are less likely to be recognized; their entitlements to other, non family-based legal means of mobility are more restricted; their abilities to navigate complex legal obstacles are less developed.
In the face of this bleak scenario, what alternatives exist? One set of possibilities entails emulating the judicious and effective measures instituted already by some far-sighted strategic actors. Among them, one can point to the “one-stop shop” child-protection measures developed by the Swedish welfare authorities addressing the unusually large influx of unaccompanied Middle Eastern child migrants. These measures include integrated services for children, anchored in child protection needs but encompassing also legal immigration procedures, education and health provisions all offered in an integrated and supportive setting, geared towards protecting the child from further trauma or harm.
We need to recognize the imperative of democratizing and globalizing access to quality education; not merely to locally-based primary education and the literacy and numeracy it is supposed to deliver, but to the quality secondary and tertiary education in increasing supply in a graying North, essential in a post-industrial era.
This employment and demographic shift entails a refiguring of migration management away from a linear model and toward a circular model; away from the notion of a one-way flow of human or technical resources across south-north borders, and towards a multi-stage process. In this model, educational opportunity as a global public good is supported by legal migration options. These initiatives are closely tied to the enhancement of well structured, and rigorously monitored, skill training and apprenticeship options to follow the education options, which can be developed in a range of settings.
Schemes to make quality higher education available to refugees, to displaced, stigmatized or marginalized populations are already being explored in a range of contexts. They are fledgling initiatives, poorly funded but visionary in their grasp of the potential for technology-mediated exponential growth of educational opportunity. An approach that incorporates elements of this integrated vision of child protection and youth mobility has a better chance of reducing current distress child migration than the border-control fixes currently being attempted.
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The writer is Director of research at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. ©The Mark News
Unlike in previous decades, this child-specific fallout from conflict, violence and ensuing forced migration has been amply brought to recent public attention. It started in the spring and summer of 2014, with relentless images of Central American children crouched on the roofs of speeding trains or huddled in freezing border detention centers as they sought refuge in the southern US.
Evidence of the child-specific global fallout of migration continued, dramatically, with the unforgettable picture of 3-year-old Syrian Aylan Kurdi’s body washed up on the Turkish shoreline. This searing image almost overnight changed the attitude to reception of Syrian refugees in Canada, and drove distress child migration to the top of the European political agenda.
Making it to Europe is only the first step; it is not a guarantee of safety. On Jan. 30, Europol announced that at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees had disappeared after arriving in Europe, many feared to have fallen into the hands of trafficking gangs.
The circumstances of vulnerable child refugees from the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar have also been documented. This religious and ethnic minority, long settled in the western Rakhine region of Myanmar, has faced severe persecution at the hands of the Buddhist majority, resulting both in extreme social and economic marginalization and in pervasive statelessness, a most fundamental denial of the community’s right to legal identity within the country. A pattern of large-scale distress migration has resulted, with Rohingya communities fleeing in search of security elsewhere.
The bleak situation of child refugees en route to a safe destination is one aspect of the unfolding tragedy. Another is the dearth of protective procedures on arrival at their destination. Despite 20 years of near-universal ratification of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children are routinely placed in detention-like facilities while immigration inquiries are pursued, before they have the benefit of social welfare or medical support, and before they have the opportunity to seek legal or counseling advice. This is why Rohingya teenagers spend months in dangerous or exploitative circumstances trying to eke out a living under the control of smugglers in Malaysia, or in detention structures in Indonesia awaiting determination of their claim to asylum without the benefit of schooling or guardianship.
Unaccompanied child migrants may even be worse off, paradoxically, than similarly situated adults. Their claims to asylum are less likely to be recognized; their entitlements to other, non family-based legal means of mobility are more restricted; their abilities to navigate complex legal obstacles are less developed.
In the face of this bleak scenario, what alternatives exist? One set of possibilities entails emulating the judicious and effective measures instituted already by some far-sighted strategic actors. Among them, one can point to the “one-stop shop” child-protection measures developed by the Swedish welfare authorities addressing the unusually large influx of unaccompanied Middle Eastern child migrants. These measures include integrated services for children, anchored in child protection needs but encompassing also legal immigration procedures, education and health provisions all offered in an integrated and supportive setting, geared towards protecting the child from further trauma or harm.
We need to recognize the imperative of democratizing and globalizing access to quality education; not merely to locally-based primary education and the literacy and numeracy it is supposed to deliver, but to the quality secondary and tertiary education in increasing supply in a graying North, essential in a post-industrial era.
This employment and demographic shift entails a refiguring of migration management away from a linear model and toward a circular model; away from the notion of a one-way flow of human or technical resources across south-north borders, and towards a multi-stage process. In this model, educational opportunity as a global public good is supported by legal migration options. These initiatives are closely tied to the enhancement of well structured, and rigorously monitored, skill training and apprenticeship options to follow the education options, which can be developed in a range of settings.
Schemes to make quality higher education available to refugees, to displaced, stigmatized or marginalized populations are already being explored in a range of contexts. They are fledgling initiatives, poorly funded but visionary in their grasp of the potential for technology-mediated exponential growth of educational opportunity. An approach that incorporates elements of this integrated vision of child protection and youth mobility has a better chance of reducing current distress child migration than the border-control fixes currently being attempted.
—
The writer is Director of research at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. ©The Mark News
