Helping ‘Children on the Run’
UN campaign aims to raise $18M to aid kids fleeing horrors in Central America
With the number of unaccompanied and separated children fleeing gang violence in Central America doubling every year since 2011, the United Nations is launching a campaign to address the “urgent yet silent crisis.”
The UN Refugee Agency will kick off the “Children on the Run” campaign in North America on Friday to raise $18 million to assist the young refugees fleeing the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA) countries — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
“We are very concerned about the forced recruitment of these children and youth into the gangs. These adolescents are sometimes killed, tortured and raped,” said Jean-Nicolas Beuze, the agency’s representative in Canada, who is working on a pilot with Ottawa to resettle a small number of the vulnerable children.
“There is widespread violence and impunity. These are not economic migrants. They have no choice but to leave their own countries.”
According to the UN, the number of refugees from the Northern Triangle countries in the last four years has increased to 146,000 in 2016 from 20,900 in 2012.
Beuze said the young refugees, many as young as 10 to 12 years old, often fall into the nets of traffickers and are sexually assaulted and exploited by human smugglers en route to Mexico and the United States. Some are even sold into prostitution, he said.
Calling it a “neglected humanitarian crisis,” Doctors Without Borders released a report this week that found half of the refugees it surveyed in Mexico had a relative killed due to violence in the last two years. One in 10 reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
More than two-thirds of the refugees entering Mexico reported being victims of violence during their transit toward the U.S., while a third of the women had been sexually abused during their journey.
“For millions of people from the NTCA region, trauma, fear and hor- rific violence are dominant facets of daily life,” said the Doctors Without Borders report. “Yet it is a reality that does not end with their forced flight to Mexico.” The UN Children on the Run campaign will focus on raising awareness of the growing number of children and families fleeing horrific violence in the three Central American countries through videos and stories on an information page on the crisis.
The money raised by donor countries and individuals will enable the UN Refugee Agency to shelter and protect the vulnerable, and facilitate family tracing, reunification and psychosocial support. So far, Beuze said, only 8 per cent of the needed money has been raised.
Although Canada is buffered from the Central America crisis by Mexico and the U.S., Beuze said he has been in contact with Canadian officials to provide aid and launch a pilot project to resettle a small number of some of the most vulnerable young refugees to Canada.
Beuze would not provide details of the resettlement pilot, but said logistics had been discussed and he hoped it would be launched later this year.