Separation During Emergencies: Is there a Stable Relationship Between Separated Children and the Rest of a Fleeing Population? Evidence from Three Situations in Africa

Abstract

With the numbers of people fleeing their home countries increasing in recent decades, the need to understand refugee flow patterns, particularly of the most vulnerable groups, is more important than ever. This study is focused on the separation of children from their parents during emergencies in the east and southern African context and highlights how populations fleeing from the same country of origin into nearby countries may be characterised by quite different rates of separation. Despite the wide range of estimates of the proportion of unaccompanied and separated children among the refugee population, in all of the cases considered here, the extent of separation is fairly stable over time, revealing a fast process of adjustment towards their long-term mean values. The findings of this study contribute to improve current knowledge of the issue of separation during emergencies and provide useful support for the monitoring of refugee population movements, and in particular for predicting the number of cases of separation, especially during periods of high variability in the number of new refugee arrivals. This is expected to strongly support the programming of related humanitarian assistance and protection for separated and unaccompanied refugee children.