Chapter 5
Looking at country of origin, claims from
unaccompanied and separated Afghan children were
the most common (8,800) in 2017, about a quarter of the
number in 2016 (26,700). The next most common
country of origin was Eritrea (4,800) followed by the
DRC (3,100), Gambia (2,600), Guinea (2,500), Somalia
(2,400), Iraq (2,100), Pakistan (1,900), Syria (1,800),
Nigeria (1,500), Bangladesh (1,300), Ethiopia (1,200), and
Côte d’Ivoire (1,100).
Registered refugees and asylum-seekers
For the first time, UNHCR operations reported on the
number of unaccompanied and separated children, and
in the future this data collection will be extended to
reporting by governments. A total of 138,700
unaccompanied and separated child refugees were
reported in 2017 by 63 operations where UNHCR
maintains its registration database.
children with 7,900 from Burundi and 2,300 from the DRC.
Other countries with high numbers of unaccompanied and
separated child refugees reported included Cameroon
(8,600), South Sudan (6,600), Egypt (4,300), Bangladesh
(4,000), Jordan (3,900), Lebanon (3,700), Turkey (3,700),64
and Chad (3,200).
Unaccompanied and separated children from South
Sudan (54,600) accounted for 39 per cent of such
children registered with UNHCR. This was due to both
the high proportion of children in the South Sudanese
refugee population (64 per cent) and the relatively high
proportion of these children who were unaccompanied
and separated (11 per cent). Other countries of origin for
unaccompanied and separated child refugees in 2017
included Burundi (10,700), the DRC (10,200), Sudan
(9,900) and Syria (9,900), Somalia (9,500), Central Africa
Republic (9,300), Eritrea (8,700), and Myanmar (5,100). ■
The largest number of unaccompanied and separated
child refugees and asylum-seekers was reported in
Ethiopia with 43,300 children, representing 9 per cent
of the entire child refugee population there. Most of
these came from South Sudan (30,100), where children
accounted for two-thirds of the refugee population; of
these, unaccompanied and separated children
comprised 9 per cent. In addition, there were 6,300
unaccompanied and separated refugee children from
Somalia, 5,600 from Eritrea, and 1,200 from Sudan.
Kenya reported 18,300 unaccompanied and separated
refugee children in 2017. As with Ethiopia, most of these
originated from South Sudan (12,200), followed by Somalia
(2,200), the DRC (1,500), and Sudan (1,400). In Sudan,
12,400 unaccompanied and separated children were
reported. Again, South Sudan was the country of origin for
the majority of these children with 10,700 registered, in
addition to 1,500 from Eritrea. Tanzania reported 10,200
unhcr > Global trends 2017
64 Not including Syrians.
49
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