Seeking Safety Alone

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by Jacqueline Bhabha

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 [Full article].