ACERWC African Committee of Experts on the Rights & Welfare of the Child Source : HCR (2015)164 The box below shows Refugees from Africa and particularly refugee children, by country of origin as at 2015 according to UNICEF:165 Main countries of origin of refugee minors in Africa Central African Republic A violent change of government in the Central African Republic in 2013 has been accompanied by insecurity throughout the country. Today, roughly half a million refugees have fled the country, of whom 58 per cent were children. Another 450,000 people had been displaced within the country by the end of 2015. A high child mortality rate, food insecurity and ‘the prevalence of domestic violence have all compounded the challenges that children in the country face. Democratic Republic of the Congo Two wars and more recent outbreaks of violence had forced more than 500,000 Congolese, including 300,000 children, outside the country as refugees by the end of 2015. Some 1.5 million Congolese were internally displaced at the end of 2015; in the first half of 2016, this number rose by another 300,000. Some 2 million children in the country are acutely malnourished, and lack of access to basic goods and services, including education, health care, food and shelters for the internally displaced, have worsened the effects of violence and insecurity. Children also face direct threats of recruitment into fighting forces; at least 3,240 children have been confirmed as active in armed groups Sudan Decades of armed conflict and violence in Darfur, the Kordofan states, Blue Nile and Abyei regions had driven 600,000 Sudanese out of the country by the end of 2015, including an estimated 400,000 child refugees. Within the country, 2.1 million children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition. Children and families have been forced out of Sudan in search of safety, food security, education, health care and shelter. Employment concerns also propel children in the older age group to seek better opportunities in foreign countries. South Sudan South Sudan is just five years old, but its territory has been racked by violence for much longer. By the end of 2015, 800,000 South Sudanese were refugees and another 1.7 million were internally displaced; through the first seven months of 2016, new outbreaks of violence had increased the number of refugees by at least 130,000. Conflict and displacement are exacerbating the deadly effects of malaria, hunger, poverty and water-borne diseases that continue to take children’s lives. Children are more disproportionately affected by displacement in South Sudan than nearly anywhere else in the world – at the end of 2015, a staggering 65 per cent of all refugees from the country were children. Somalia More than two decades of internal conflict in Somalia have forced 1.1 million Somalis out of the country, half of them children. Adding to the toll, another 1.2 million people are internally displaced within the country. Severe acute malnutrition has intensified food security concerns in the country while outbreaks of polio, measles and cholera are an additional threat to children’s lives. El Niño, exacerbating floods in the southern central regions and droughts in Somaliland, has intensified both international and internal displacement. 164 165 Data available at : https://migrationdataportal.org/?cm49=140&m=2&i=refDestinunder18&t=2015&sm49=17 UNICEF, Uprooted: The Growing Crisis for Refugee and Migrant Children, September 2016 p 57. 44