A fresh analysis by Save the Children International has revealed that the number of displaced children across West Africa increased from 321,000 in 2019 to 1.8 million.
The organisation, while analysing figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), national governments and UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to calculate the number of children displaced in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger over the past five years, discovered that 53,000 kids have been forced to leave their homes in the affected countries.
The exercise also showed that Cote d’Ivoire, which emerged from its internal war in 2011, has also been affected by the spillover in central Sahel.
Conflict in neighbouring Burkina Faso and Mali has led to a 12-fold increase in children seeking refuge in the country, numbering around 2,450 at the end of 2022 and around 29,700 currently.
Regional Director of Advocacy and Campaigns for Save the Children, Vishna Shah, regretted that kids were already living in one of the most challenging places to grow up in the world before losing their homes, communities and everything that they knew.
The rights agency, however, called on governments to protect civilians during conflicts, with special focus on children, stating that international rules and standards must be imbibed to reduce impact of violence on kids and their families.
Shah pointed out that children make up 40 per cent of the world’s displaced people.
