2.2 Who is a Refugee?
2.2.3 Unaccompanied children
The Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC] (1989) Article 1 defines a child as “every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier” (p. 2). Based on the CRC definition of a child, any person who is below eighteen years is a child. The UNHCR (2006) defines unaccompanied children (or unaccompanied minors) as: “children who have been separated from both parents and relatives and are not being cared for by an adult who, by law or custom, is responsible for doing so” (p. 5).
Children can get separated from their parents because of wars, famines and natural disasters, among other factors. They will seek refuge in foreign countries without the company of parents/guardians. Couch (2011) maintains that many refugee young people enter Australia as unaccompanied children and arrive without any family or extended family. Children may have escaped persecution in their home countries and look forward to a peaceful life in a foreign country. Unaccompanied and separated children have long been a feature of asylum and refugee flows, particularly in the developing world (Crock, 2006).
Unaccompanied refugee minors are a distinct class of immigrants with a complex set of needs.
They are an exceptionally vulnerable group of people (German & Ehntholt, 2007). They encounter harsh experiences in their home countries such as witnessing deaths of loved ones which may force them to seek refuge in a foreign country (Sidhu et al., 2011). Unaccompanied children experience greater challenges than their accompanied peers, both before and during resettlement. This is because unaccompanied children have to face all challenges by themselves, without parents/guardians to help them (Michelson & Sclare, 2009). Some unaccompanied
23 children may not have asylum which allow them to obtain services like education, health care and government support.
Bhabha (2004) argues that it is more difficult for separated or unaccompanied children to gain asylum as compared to adults. Children cannot stand up for themselves and pursue the application process that is long and sometimes cumbersome. They are too young to find proper legal representation. In many situations, their applications are continuously postponed and they take a long period of time to process until they are granted refugee status (Bhabha, 2004).
Crock (2006) postulates that unaccompanied and separated children face particular hurdles in trying to access asylum processes in Australia. In order for a child to gain access to Australia’s asylum procedures, he/she has to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that he/she is in need of the country’s protection. A child will have to do all that without legal assistance of any kind and prove that he/she is a person to whom Australia owes protection obligation (Crock, 2006). The problem is that most of the children may not be in possession of the legal papers that are needed.
Some of them may have entered the country illegally and they could have lost their documentation.
As a result of illegal entry, children avoid officials because of fear of being caught and deported to their home countries (Elwyn, Gladwell & Lyall, 2012). They go through many challenges in the host country where they require help. Some experience psychosocial problems and will require assistance to cope with their situation. German and Ehntholt (2007) contend that psychosocial support groups can be helpful because of their capabilities of providing social contact to children that are isolated and finding it difficult to cope in their new environment.
Elwyn et al. (2012) maintained that many unaccompanied minors suffer from guilt about the fact that they now live in safety, while their families in their home countries may still be at risk.
Inability to contact their families often exacerbates this anxiety. Under the circumstances, children find it very hard to adjust in the places that they will be staying as well as in schools.
24 According to Bhugra et al. (2011) refugee children find it hard to adjust at home and in school.
The situation results in some older children having a responsibility of looking after the young ones. Some unaccompanied refugee children face many problems in which they will be grappling to forget the past and trying to get to terms with the challenges in their new environment which could be very hostile (Papadopoulos, 2002).
CoRMSA (2009) contends that most of the unaccompanied children face the challenge of sexual abuse, exploitation, and a great deprivation of human rights. The greatest problem that unaccompanied children experience is the fact that hosting countries may not treat them as children who require basic needs, but regard them as mere refugees (CoRMSA, 2009). Huemer and Vostanis (2010) asserted that throughout Europe, unaccompanied refugee minors are exposed to an additional institutional conflict. They are treated according to their refugee or asylum seeking status, and not primarily as children and adolescents. The majority of unaccompanied children are often denied education and frequently have to work to survive. This raises the possibility of exploitation and family separation and can inflict psychosocial damage on children (Craig, 2010).
According to CoRMSA (2011) many unaccompanied children who come to the Republic of South Africa are faced with considerable risks such as working under abusive and exploitative conditions. Women’s Refugee Commission (2011) echoed the same sentiments that displaced young people, both male and female, are vulnerable to recruitment into armed groups. Children may resort to dangerous jobs to meet their own survival needs or to criminal activities or drug and alcohol abuse. Female refugee children are at a greater risk of abuses such as physical violence and exploitation (Women’s Refugee Commission, 2011). Unaccompanied children are vulnerable to all those inhumane treatments because they are minors who depend on adults for survival. Some adults take advantage of children’s dependence on them to exploit and abuse them. This makes refugee children have difficult experiences.
25 2.3 Refugee Experiences
Refugees go through a lot of unbearable experiences which begin in their home countries and to the host country. Craig (2010) maintains that many refugee children are very reluctant to talk about experiences that they encountered in their home and host countries. This is because it is painful to review unpleasant experiences in their lives. According to Papadopoulos (2007) events that refugee children experience cause them to develop some degree of psychological distress, upheaval and confusion. They go through harsh experiences which include loss of their loved ones, losing homes and sometimes losing their identities (Muneghina & Papadopoulos, 2010).
Some refugees go through experiences which may cause them to have a unique form of disorientation (Muneghina & Papadopoulos, 2010).
Refugee experiences can be categorized into three stages, namely: home country experiences (pre-migration), transit experiences (transmigration) and host country experiences (post- migration) (Anderson et al., 2004; Bhugra & Gupta, 2011; Bryant & Ahearn, 1999; Lustig et al., 2004). All three stages of migration can pose stress to refugees (Weaver & Burns, 2001). Each stage has its distinct set of challenges which refugee children encounter. Bhugra et al. (2011) asserted that the first stage of home country experiences involves the decision and planning to move away. In the second stage (transit), refugees would physically relocate to another country.
Both home country and transit experiences may cause a lot of stress to refugee children (Lustig et al., 2004). Henley and Robinson (2011) claim that pre-migration and transmigration experiences of refugees make them feel very stressed and sometimes traumatised that they would find it difficult to settle in the host country. The third stage is viewed as the absorption of the refugee within the social and cultural framework of the new society (Bhugra et al., 2011).
Marar (2011) asserts that refugee phases are complex mainly because children have to go through difficult circumstances in each and every stage. In some cases, children’s experiences could be so traumatising that they may lose their identities during the course of migration.
Children’s experiences can be exacerbated when they arrive in the host country where they are expected to adapt quickly and move on with life in a new setting (Marar, 2011). Rousseau, Drapeau and Corin (1997) argued that refugee children are at risk of developing mental health problems on account of the acute stress and trauma associated with the refugee processes. This
26 stress comes as a result of massive challenges that children encounter on their homes, on the journey to the host country and complexities associated with living in a new society (Rousseau et al., 1997).