June 20 is World Refugee Day, and the plight of refugee children demands our attention. Ninety years ago, my father entered this country from Mexico as a child refugee from the terrors of a civil war that tore his nation apart for a decade.
When he was alive, he told me about the terrible scenes he witnessed as a child: Battlefields drenched with blood. Hunger. Kidnappings. Mothers hiding their daughters from the threat of rape. Fathers, sons and brothers forced into combat, never to be heard from again. One of the things my father remembered most -- even as he was dying at the age of 87 -- was going to battlefield after battlefield, hand in hand with his mother, looking for his father. Since they never knew whether his father was among the dead, they would go to each body and look at the face. Often, because many of the men died with their eyes open, they'd close the eyes and put rocks or coins on the eyes to keep them shut. It was a terrifying memory to him, seeing the eyes of the dead and the blood everywhere.
Today, across the globe, many children have to contend with the same conditions my father did. In 2003, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported caring for 20 million refugees, of which 7 million were between the ages of 12 and 24. According to Human Rights Watch, refugee children represent half of the world's refugee population. Refugee children suffer "double jeopardy," says Human Rights Watch. First, they endure the situation in their home country that led to them becoming refugees. Then they face hardships in the countries where they seek refuge. These include labor exploitation, physical abuse, denial of education, sexual violence and exploitation, cross-border attacks and recruitment as child soldiers.
Human Rights Watch's 2002 World Watch Report provides stark examples, especially for refugee children who are separated from their families. In Spain two years ago, unaccompanied Moroccan children were beaten and threatened by Spanish and Moroccan police, then dumped on the Moroccan side of the border. In Greece, children were excluded from a program that gave legal status to undocumented immigrants in the country prior to June 2, 2000. In the United States, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detains unaccompanied children in "jail-like settings," often denying the children contact with independent monitors, such as the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
The mistreatment of refugee children, here and abroad, must stop. Anyone can help by taking action. Even small steps. We must educate ourselves and others about the situation of the world refugee youth and children. We can donate funds to international programs working with children refugees, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross or the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. We must demand that our government, and others, act appropriately when it comes to the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. We must teach our children about the lives and struggles of other children so that when they see them on the nightly news, they understand that we are all connected in this world, regardless of religion, race, nationality or politics. My father's childhood should not be the norm.
Yolanda Chvez Leyva is a historian at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she specializes in border and Mexican American history. This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.