ACERWC African Committee of Experts on the Rights & Welfare of the Child Chapter 3 DRIVERS OF CHILDREN ON THE MOVE 3.1 Assessing the scale of children on the move within Africa Between 2015 and 2017, an estimated total of 18.2 million children were on the move across the African continent. Central Africa and the Great Lakes Region bear the brunt of such movement, followed by East Africa (see figure 1). However, these represent official figures of children who registered as refugees, IDPs or asylum seekers with UN agencies or have asked for some form of protection. The number of undocumented movements (e.g. seasonal movement in spaces allowing free movement of people) not being factored in, means that the scale of movement may in fact be far higher. It is worth pointing out that despite the preoccupation in most studies and policy debates about the movements along the eastern and western Mediterranean routes, children are predominantly affected outside of those routes. The risk of excessive focus on migration routes towards Europe neglects the fact that children on the move mostly require protection within Africa. Source: UNHCR datasets 128 Boys and girls move as much. Indeed, a disaggregation of data shows that almost as many girls as boys are on the move in Africa (see Figure 3). 128 The visual shows the number of children aged 0-17 present. Their countries of origin may be African or otherwise. The numbers include refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people (IDPs), returned refugees, returned IDPs and stateless persons. 38