At least two children drowned every day trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe this year while an “untold number continue to perish” in the Gulf of Aden and other regions, the United Nations agency for refugees (UNHCR) reports.

This again illustrates the horrific outcomes of numerous swathes of strife besetting the world. While children represent one third of the world’s population, they are about 51 per cent of the world’s refugees. In Africa, up to 70 per cent are children.

One heart-rending result is the callousness of responses suffered by children driven from their homes because of wars and other violence. They face many types of egregious violations of their inalienable rights as human beings.

Displaced persons are at a record high of 65.3 million worldwide and the number of unaccompanied and separated children seeking refuge is growing dramatically.

“In some countries, children on the move are detained, at times for indefinite periods and in inhumane conditions,” the report Children on the Move says. They have “fallen prey to smugglers and traffickers, and are at risk of recruitment into armed groups, sexual and gender-based violence, kidnapping, child labor and child marriage.”

“Some are orphaned or separated from their parents and other family members. Millions of refugee children are not in school. Disabled children and those in need of medical treatment may go without care.”

UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi insists: “Children on the move are first and foremost children, and should be treated as such. They need love, care and schooling…Detention centers are no place for a child. Immigration detention of children must stop.”

“Regardless of the circumstances and reasons why they are on the move, all children need special protection and support,” he adds.

Yet, children are among those treated the worst by governments trying to hinder refugees and other immigrants from crossing their borders.

This is happening despite international law and standards that identify children as deserving of special protection and assistance. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is one of the most widely ratified international treaties, and its provisions are to be applied “without discrimination of any kind”. But their application falls short.

Now, concern for the fate of these international treaties has risen considerably because Donald Trump is the president-elect. The US has always been a champion of humane treatment and legal protections for children although its commitment shook in recent years because of the influx of unaccompanied children illegally entering the US from central and south America.

Many more countries may ignore global conventions protecting children if Trump erodes American backing for their letter and spirit. His radical views against immigrants and Muslim refugee lend credence to these concerns.

The outgoing Obama administration tried to tie his hands by signing the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in September 2016. It pledged the US to addressing “the specific needs of children travelling as part of large movements of refugees and migrants, especially children who are unaccompanied or separated from their families”.

Some 112,000 asylum claims by unaccompanied and separated children were lodged worldwide in 2015 – the highest number recorded since UNHCR began collecting such data in 2006. More than 140,000 children were detained for immigration-related reasons in 12 countries at the end of 2015.

They become vulnerable because of parents lost to war or disease, acute poverty and lack of food, and absence of educational and economic opportunity. Stateless children are the worst hit by trafficking and abusive forms of child labor. They fall more easily into the hands of smugglers and human traffickers.

“When children move alone it is often because the family can only afford to send one child, not necessarily the eldest, to seek protection elsewhere… Families usually invest heavily in their child’s journey and for these children, failure is not an option,” the report says.

“The responsibility to reach the intended country or region and to repay their family’s debt weighs heavily on them.” They soldier on despite discrimination, racism and xenophobia. And their numbers continue to grow.