UNITED NATIONS, April 16. /TASS/. Around 3,500 migrant children lost their lives or vanished over the last 10 years while trying to reach Italy from North Africa, according to Reliefweb, a humanitarian information platform under the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
Many of the migrant children, who attempt to cross the Mediterranean, are "fleeing war, conflict, violence and poverty," which force them to seek safety and opportunities elsewhere, the portal wrote citing UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
"Approximately 3,500 children have died or disappeared attempting to cross the Central Mediterranean migration route to Italy over the past 10 years, according to the latest estimates from UNICEF. This is the equivalent of one child losing their life every day for a decade," Reliefweb reported.
Roughly seven in 10 children undertake this journey without a parent or legal guardian, meaning that most children who perished or disappeared along this route were travelling alone. According to surveys, more than half of underage migrants report experiencing physical abuse.
UNICEF recalled that at least 20,803 people have died or disappeared in the central Mediterranean over the past 10 years.
"Many shipwrecks on this perilous migration route from North Africa leave no survivors or go unrecorded - making the true number of people dying or disappearing practically impossible to verify and likely much higher," Reliefweb wrote.