New York 28 Feb (ANA) - The United Nations has warned that large numbers of children are still risking their lives to make the dangerous journey from Libya to Italy. Unicef says almost 26,000 children - most of them unaccompanied - crossed the Mediterranean last year. In its new report, Unicef says many children suffer from violence and sexual abuse at the hands of smugglers and traffickers. But they rarely report their abuse, for fear of arrest and deportation. The agency also says there is a lack of food, water and medical care in Libya's detention centres. The plight of children, many of them unaccompanied by parents, has become a tragically familiar part of the wider story of mass migration over the past two years. But while much has been said about the extreme dangers faced at sea, the privations experienced on land, especially in Libya, are less familiar. Unicef's latest report, A Deadly Journey for Children, documents - in sometimes horrific detail - stories of slavery, violence and sexual abuse experienced by huge numbers of vulnerable children making their perilous way to Italy.

"What really shocked Unicef staff and me... is what happens to them [children] on this route," says Justin Forsyth, the organisation's deputy executive director. "Many of these children have been brutalised, raped, killed on this route." Girls such as nine-year-old Kamis, who set off with her mother from their home in Nigeria. After a desert crossing in which a man died, followed by a dramatic rescue at sea, they found themselves held at a detention centre in the Libyan town of Sabratha. "They used to beat us every day," Kamis told the researchers. "There was no water there either. That place was very sad. There's nothing there."

Much of the violence is gratuitous, and much of it is sexual. "Nearly half the women and children interviewed had experienced sexual abuse during migration," the report says. "Often multiple times and in multiple locations." Borders, it seems, are particularly dangerous. "Sexual violence was widespread and systemic at crossings and checkpoints," says the report. Many of the assailants are in uniform. This is said to be just one reason why those who suffer abuse are reluctant to report their experiences. And Libya, as the funnel through which so many journeys pass, has earned itself a shocking reputation as the epicentre of abuse.

"Approximately one third [of those interviewed] indicated they had been abused in Libya," the report says. "A large majority of these children did not answer when asked who had abused them." (ANA)

FA/ANA/28 February 2017---