A child who has been through so much suffering needs urgent support. They need food and clean water but above all, they need to feel safe. Safe enough to begin recovering from trauma and safe enough to feel like a child again.
Anna, a child who has been through so much suffering needs urgent support. © UNHCROli Cohen
It was nighttime when Anna was awoken by the sound of machine guns. “When they screamed run, I ran,” reminisces Anna, gloomily recalling the last time she saw her parents. Scared for her life as screams of pain and despair filled the quiet African night, she did the only thing a child her age could do: run away. But in a night where chaos reigned and neighbours died, she quickly lost her parents in her desperate flight for safety.
For days, she walked through a warzone, too terrified to sleep.
Anna was rattled by the proximity of wild animals, horrified by putrescent piles of decomposing bodies and terrified by the sound of constant fighting. There were also many children crying and alone along the journey.
Anna’s haggard eyes now stare at an uncertain future, made even darker by the possibility that her mother and father may well have died on the night war came to her village. In regions torn apart by war and disaster, lone refugee children like Anna are the most vulnerable of all.
When she reached Ethiopia, UNHCR immediately supported her with food, shelter and water, before helping her to start over in Gambella with a foster family. Anna is still recovering but is grateful for what she is given and for her education and time in the child-friendly play areas within the camp.
Three years on, Anna is 15 and living in a new home filled with laughter of five other children. She has developed a love of school and dreams of becoming a doctor.
But Anna is just one of the tens of thousands of vulnerable refugee children in urgent need of care and protection.
To ensure the children’s rights and protection, UNHCR is working with national authorities, international and local organisations, and other partners to assist, protect and find solutions for unaccompanied and separated children.
UNHCR is helping to restore their futures through family tracing and reunification services and is working to rebuild their lives through psychosocial support and education services, provision of material support, and livelihood activities.
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