Around 1.5 Million Kids Are Locked Up Worldwide Each Year
By Sushmita Roy
Photographs of immigrant children wrapped in aluminum foil — unable to escape the steel wire fencing of the detainment facilities on the US-Mexico border — spread like wildfire last year. No matter what side of the political spectrum people identified with, they were all talking. Angry protesters stormed the streets cursing the Trump administration’s family separation policies. But these pictures were only a small glimpse of the reality more than a million children around the world faced everyday.
A United Nations study revealed that 1.5 million children are deprived of liberty each year. The first of its kind research dug deeper into the conditions of detention and its harmful impact on child development.
The study found 410,000 children are held in jails or prisons, 330,000 in immigration detention, and between 430,000 and 680,000 in institutions that meet the legal definition of deprivation of liberty. Children with disabilities are over represented in detention, according to the study, and the number of children detained in armed conflicts have risen sharply.
A still from an abandoned factory in Lebanon. Picture Credit: Anthony Gale/ Flickr
The results have prompted a group of 170 non-governmental organizations to call on the U.N. members to drastically reduce the number of detained and confined minors.
Manfred Nowak, an U.N. Independent Expert, will present the research to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday in New York.
“Children are often detained illegally, unnecessarily, and at great cost to their health and future,” said Alex Kamarotos, director of Defense for Children International and co-chair of the NGO Panel for the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. “The Global Study should prompt every country to adopt new policies and practices to dramatically decrease the number of children who are locked up.”
According to the study, deprivation of liberty is linked to early deaths in children after release and aggravated existing health conditions. New health problems like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress are also likely to follow suit.
While Nowak suggested that some countries have made progress and no longer detain immigrant children, other need to take steps and reduce the number of children in detention and only use it as a last resort in exceptional cases.
“Detention is fundamentally harmful to children, yet many countries use it as their first response to difficult circumstances, rather than the last,” Jo Becker, child rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch and co-chair of the NGO Panel, said. “Governments should invest in alternatives that not only protect children’s rights but produce much better outcomes for children, families, and society overall.”
But even as the U.N. General Assembly meets on Tuesday, around 2,000 children are still held in Border Patrol custody, without their parents, any given day, in the US.