©Human Rights Watch 2000
A Chechen refugee girl in front of her tent in the Sputnik refugee camp during a winter storm, December 24, 1999.
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Children’s Rights Division - Home Page
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Refugees
Refugee children are among the most vulnerable children in the world. Not only do they suffer from war or other forms of persecution in their countries of origin, but many refugee children continue to suffer human rights abuses in countries of asylum. More than half of the world's refugee population are children, yet their rights and special protection needs as children are frequently neglected.
In 1999, Human Rights Watch conducted an in-depth investigation into the protection of Sierra Leonean refugee children in Guinea, where children made up 65 percent of the 300,000 Sierra Leonean refugees there. Most of the children interviewed by Human Rights Watch had been in refugee camps in Guinea just over a year, with little hope of returning home in the near future. Internally displaced children within Sierra Leone were thought to suffer many of the same problems on an even larger scale.
HRW Focus on Human Rights: Civil War in Sierra Leone
Press Release, July 1999
Sierra Leonean Refugee Children Neglected
Press Release, May 1999
Parties to Sierra Leone War Urged Not to Recruit Child Soldiers
Forgotten Children of War: Sierra Leonean Refugee Children in Guinea
Children Detained by the INS in the United States
Separated and unaccompanied children are particularly vulnerable. Each year, thousands of children enter the United States unaccompanied by parents or relatives. Many are apprehended by the INS and held in detention--in some cases they were housed with juvenile offenders and subjected to a rigid and punitive environment--sometimes for months at a time. Investigating detention conditions in Arizona, California and Pennsylvania, Human Rights Watch has found that their rights are often violated — in breach of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. statutory provisions, INS regulations, the terms of court orders binding on the U.S., and international law.
Detained and Deprived of Rights: Children in INS Custody
HRW homepage
The Other Immigrant Children
Editorial by Jo Becker
Promises Broken:
Refugee Children
World Report 2000 Section on Children's Rights: Refugee Children
Related HRW reports
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