Mapping Children on the Move within Africa Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Globally, there were about 244 million international migrants in 2015, which translates to 3.3% of the world’s population and an estimated 740 million internal migrants.1 A notable statistic is the growing number of people who are being forced to migrate within borders and outside due to conflict, trade and economic factors, human security, smuggling and trafficking among others.2 Children are not immune to both small-scale and large-scale movement of persons across the world, either alone or with their parents. Children on the move, as they have been described in various literature, include children who are moving, either voluntarily or involuntarily, with or without their parents, guardians or caregivers, within or outside their countries and who, though open to the benefits of movement, are also at risk of economic or sexual exploitation, abuse, neglect and violence.3 While migration challenges affect all persons on the move, children on the move are more vulnerable and at risk of exploitation, abuse, and suffer the hazards along their migration route and destinations. Children bear the brunt of the perceptions of migrants as social and economic burdens on receiving states, criminals, nuisances or as stateless persons. Consequently, their most fundamental rights including their best interests are either not protected or are tacitly abused. In some cases, contrary to global and regional human rights and child rights standards such as best interests of the child, migrant children are returned to their countries of origin or within the same country, to the situations or places that engendered their movement in the first place. These violations are also occasioned by inadequate national legal and policy frameworks to identify and protect children on the move. The dearth of relevant statistical data on children on the move further compounds the already grave situation created by inadequacy of effective laws and policies and limited implementation. Furtherance to its mandate to undertake relevant studies and assessment of situations on problems concerning the rights and welfare of the child in Africa,4 and with a view to making recommendations for addressing such problems to Member States, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), has identified children on the move as one of the emerging issues in child protection in Africa. The Committee has therefore commissioned the present study to map children on the move within the African continent. 1.1 Definitions The term ‘children on the move’ gained prominence in child rights discourse between 2000 and 2010 and was used to describe children who had left their places of habitual residence to other places within or outside their countries.5 The term has since been expanded and applied by different institutions working for and with children to cover a wider spectrum of children in different forms of migratory situations. One such broad definition adopted by Terre des Hommes and which reflects the objectives of this study is as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 International Organisation for Migration (IOM), World Migration Report 2018 (2017) IOM p 2. IOM (2017) as above. IOM, Children on the Move (2013) IOM p 7. Art 42(a)(i) of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Vella K, ‘Power, paternalism and children on the move’ (2016) Journal of International Humanitarian Action 1:3 at p 3. Available at <https://jhumanitarianaction.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41018-0160003-y> (last accessed on 30 March 2018). 9