Since the beginning of the recent migration crisis, we have witnessed an increase in the number of unaccompanied children who are trying to reach the safety of affluent Western societies. Countless young people are forced into displacement due to increasing poverty, violence, development projects, social instability, and/or increasing environmental degradation. Dr. Mlado Ivanovic approaches this phenomenon by taking violence, oppression and various forms of exclusion faced by children refugees to demonstrate the structural limits of the present institutionalized refugee and asylum system. The outdated and gendered nature of these political structures leaves refugee children with terrible choices: internal displacement, sexual violence, squalid refugee camps, enslavement, urban destitution, human trafficking or dangerous migration. Looking at these conditions, it becomes clear that it is necessary to rethink our humanitarian commitments and political practices in order to promote essential protections for the youngest and most vulnerable forcefully displaced people.
