UNICEF calls on governments around the world to step up protection of refugees and migrants, especially minors
More children than ever before after its end World War II were uprooted to be saved from armed conflictsviolent incidents and other crises in late 2021, underlines a press release issued today by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) from New York.
According to the data of his service UN for childrensomewhere 36.5 million minors were forced to live away from home at the end of last year, 2.2 million more than in 2020. More specifically, 13.7 million were refugee children or were pending asylum and 22.8 million were internally displaced, the statement said.
The sad record is due in particular to armed conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Yemen, UNICEF said, while others 7.3 million children were left homeless last year due to natural disasters.
THE UNICEF calls on governments around the world strengthen the protection of refugees and migrants, especially minors.
As these numbers go back to the end of last year, do not include children from Ukraine who were left homeless or forced to flee their homeland due to the invasion of the Russian army.
An estimated 2 million children have been displaced and another 3 million have been displaced since the war began almost four months ago on February 24.
Children are displaced because extreme weather eventssuch as the drought in the Horn of Africa, or the floods in India, Bangladesh, South Africa.
More than a third of uprooted children live in sub-Saharan Africa (3.9 million, 36%), a quarter in Europe and Central Asia (2.6 million, 25%) and more than one in ten (1.4 million, 13%) in the Middle East and North Africa, according to a UNICEF statement.
Almost two thirds of the children living in the refugee school go to schoolbut the same is true for only a third of teens, he points out.
