Do Not Let Them Live as Immigrant
A youth initiative designed to raise awareness of the struggles and rights of refugee children.
Our project was funded and implemented by the European Union and the Spanish National Agency (INJUVE).
There are millions of people fleeing wars, human rights violations, conflicts, internal disturbances and difficult living conditions in their countries, denied access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement, and therefore leaving their homes to seek safety elsewhere. Immigrant, asylum seeker or refugee… The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that in 2018 the number of people fleeing war, conflict and persecution exceeded 70 million, the highest number the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has witnessed in its nearly 70-year history. It was observed that the majority of these people were children. In 2018, one out of every two refugees was a child. According to the report published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees before 20 June 2019, World Refugee Day, there are approximately 25.9 million refugee children under the age of 18.
Today, millions of children cannot live in their own homes, in their own countries, receive education or continue their lives in healthy conditions like their peers, as a result of the negativities and inhumane treatment they are exposed to. Even though every child has the same and equal rights regardless of religion, language and race, 25.9 million children cannot use these rights. Even worse, many of these children are getting lost in the process. At the beginning of 2016, Europol confirmed that 10,000 refugee children were missing across Europe. Families of refugee and asylum-seeking children migrate because they believe they will find better education and job opportunities in the target countries, taking into account many risks, and most of them turn their route to European countries.
Article 33 of the Geneva Refugee Convention guarantees that anyone seeking asylum cannot be turned away from the border and prohibits being sent to another country where they are in danger of persecution. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says “Unaccompanied minors cannot be turned away from the border.” However, these articles are often ignored and refugee and asylum-seeking children are left to their own fate – in many cases, to death. Children who manage to reach the target countries are abused by many local citizens. No rights are effectively given to children in their own countries or in the countries they arrive in, especially the right to life.
Children, who have special needs due to their age, are more sensitive to external factors. They need the protection, care and emotional support provided by adults not only for survival, but also for their psychological and social health. Violence, loss, insecurity, disintegration of family and social structures, and limitations in food, health and education resources deeply affect children. We want to realise our project in order not to ignore this violation of rights and to increase awareness of “children” – a word that has the same meaning for all peoples – both among the public and decision makers. The more people we can reach, the more awareness we can raise on this issue.
Specific goals are:
- To show the problems of refugee children to young people.
- To inform and raise awareness about children’s rights.
- To raise awareness in young people that every child has the same rights, no matter what religion, language or race they have.
- To increase the motivation and competence of young people to take initiative in addressing violations of children’s rights by producing solutions to the problems of refugee children.
