In a speech before a meeting of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, a senior UN human rights official said Monday that children around the world face ongoing poverty, violence and discrimination [press release]. Kate Gilmore [official profile], the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, said [speech] that the worsening migrant crisis was one of the key circumstances leading to widespread human rights abuses. Gilmore said that 26 million children around the world have been displaced from their homes by conflict.

Violations of children’s rights were a serious cause for concern in 2016. In November the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said [JURIST report] that the governments of France and the UK were failing in their obligation to protect refugee children in the Calais “Jungle” refugee camp. This accusation came on the heels of an administrative court in Lille, France rejecting requests from almost a dozen aid groups and permitting the closure process [JURIST report] of the migrant camp to continue, a decision that forced [CNN report] thousands to seek refuge elsewhere. In October a UN spokesperson said [JURIST report] that Syria’s continued infliction of harm on children is a “brutal abdication of human rights obligations they have committed to respect.” In August Human Rights Watch reported that children from Iraq were being recruited to serve in Iraqi militias. The Convention on the Rights of the Child [official website] was created in 1990 to help mitigate human rights abuses against children.