In this chapter, Arezo Malakooti (Senior expert on migration, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime), provides an overview of the global data on child migration, exploring how and why children travel in the regions covered by the various contributors to this book.

At the outset, Malakooti acknowledges that data on international migration is not particularly precise or reliable. Statistics in many regions are scarce or non-existent, so that numbers are generally based on estimates. Specific data on child migration is even more difficult to come by.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) in its Global Trends Report 2015, only a few countries supply refugee data disaggregated by age. In 2015, data disaggregated by age was available for 21.2 million people only, which represented 33 per cent of the estimated global number of refugees.

This chapter draws heavily on the ground-breaking report prepared by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2015, Uprooted: The Growing Crisis for Refugee and Migrant Children, which represents a laudatory effort to compile all of the data then available on the topic of children on the move around the world.

Protecting Migrant Children

In Search of Best Practice

Edited by Mary Crock, Professor of Public Law, Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney, Australia and Lenni B. Benson, Professor of Law, New York Law School, US

image source: www.soschildrensvillages.ca