Child Refugee Crisis

ONE YEAR AGO in September 2015, a 3-year-old boy named Alan Kurdi drowned in the Mediterranean Sea as he and his family fled war-ravaged Syria. Images of his lifeless body face down on the shore unleashed an international firestorm, galvanizing public outrage over the growing numbers of refugees worldwide and how they are being treated.

Every day, conflict and persecution force nearly 34,000 people – 24 people per minute – to flee their homes in search of safety, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

Today, there are more than 65 million forcibly displaced people globally. If they all resettled in one place, it would be the 21^stlargest country in the world – larger in population than the United Kingdom, and nearly three times as large as Australia.

Like the citizens of many real countries, the world’s displaced are a diverse population – people from different cultures who practice different faiths and speak different languages. In the same vein as the International Olympic Committee creating a new team to allow refugees to compete, imagining all displaced people as citizens of one “country” recognizes their value as equal members of a global society and brings attention to the magnitude of their collective plight.

More than that, it allows for comparison of various population data with country-level averages across the world – such as, the percentage of school-aged children attending school. To place this “country” in context, Save the Children examined the indicators most relevant to the well-being of children, and found the following. The 21^stLargest Country:

• has the fastest-growing population in the world
• has one of the youngest populations in the world
• ranks close to last in the world on school attendance
• is among the most dangerous places for harmful practices like early marriage
• is in the top half of the most urbanized countries in the world
• loses too many children to preventable health conditions
• would have a middle-income economy, if its people had adequate access to employment.

This comparison makes clear that forcibly displaced families, and even more so their children, are being left far behind, both in terms of their immediate circumstances and investments in their future. It also underscores the urgency of reaching them with help. Many of the problems they face are ones for which there are already known solutions.

Citizens of this country probably will not be able to return home for many years. In that time, its population will continue to grow at a rapid pace and, without concerted action, fall farther behind. Should that happen, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals would likely be out of reach. The question before us now is whether we have the political will to include forcibly displaced people in our shared vision, and action, for a better world in 2030.

Save the Children is calling on all countries to step up and commit to a New Deal for every forcibly displaced child – one in which we ensure children’s right to health, education and freedom from exploitation, and share responsibility for doing so. The challenges facing displaced people are formidable, but if governments work together, along with non-governmental organizations and the private sector, those challenges can be overcome.

• Forced to Flee (PDF)