12,000,000
Of all the refugees in the world, half are children. There may be as many as 12 million children who have been forced to flee their homes.

Here, such children talk about how they lost their families during times of war and how they are now being given shelter and helped to trace their relatives again.

'The guards said: 'Who wants a child? Ricardo (In Spanish) Read Ricardo's story (In English)

abducted As part of a campaign of terror used in the 12-year-long El Salvador civil war, children were stolen from their families by the American-backed military. The strategy terrorised the peasant families caught between the guerrillas and the military. The kidnapped children were either used by the military, or placed in children's homes where they were told they were orphans. More than two thousand such Salvador 'orphans' were adopted during the civil war, many went overseas. When Ricardo was 8 years old, his village was attacked and burnt. He was taken by the military.

refugees Up to 200 000 Chechen civilians remain in the refugee camps over the border with Ingushetia, tens of thousands are staying in Chechen capital Grozny, despite all-out Russian army attack on the town. Months of war saw hundreds of kids orphaned and their families separated, life in camps brought hunger and disease. Often relatives were risking their life going back to Chechnya, looking for their families. Sometimes kids were making this journey alone. Extended reports on Chechnya from BBC News Online Since widespread civil strife erupted in Kosovo, more than half a million people have left Yugoslavia’s southern province. Many of them are children. Despite some highly publicised air lifts of Kosovan refugees to other European countries, the majority of the refugees remain in makeshift accommodation in Macedonia and Albania. The UNHCR is monitoring their condition on a daily basis. About seven million refugees left Afghanistan in the 1970s when the war between the Jihad militia and the Soviet-backed government intensified. After two decades of war, Afghanistan is now controlled by the Taliban but the country remains volatile. Two million Afghan refugees have settled in Pakistan and one and a half million in Iran. Children live in camps with very basic amenities, where a rudimentary system of education is in place.

'Of all the refugees in the world, half are children' Olara Otunnu, UN 'We are the white doves of peace' Afghan children (In Persian) Read the children's song (In English) "I want to stay in Kosovo." Riland, 10 Albanian, Central Kosovo Read Riland's story (In English)

orphans Since 1991, when the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was ousted, Somalia has been without an effective government. The country has degenerated into fiefdoms protected by armed militia. Fighting continues between rival factions. The story of one boy, who lost his entire family in the conflict has become a ballad told and sung by Somalis across the country. In Rwanda, the genocide in 1994 left an estimated 400,000 orphans. Odetta is one of them. She was 12 years old at the time and saw her parents and sister butchered in front of her. She herself was kidnapped and was attacked with a machete. Deeply traumatised, today she is cared for in an orphanage run by the Sisters of Calcutta.

Mohammed was also orphaned in the conflict 'We were a family of 6 children with a mother and father.' (In Somali) Read the ballad (In English) 'My father, mother and younger sisters were all killed' Odetta (In Swahili) Read Odetta's story (In English)

'They told us their parents got killed.' Mapendano (In Swahili) Read Mapendano's story (In English)

fostered Despite the poverty in Rwanda, some families are fostering children who were orphaned in the genocide. Even though Mapendano already has six children of her own, with support from the Save the Children Fund, she has taken 2 more children into her home. She doesn't know if the children will be with her forever or if one day they will be claimed by a lost relative.

found Following the peace accord and democratic elections in El Salvador in 1994, many parents have started to search for their lost children. So far, the Search for Disappeared Children, has found 74 teenagers who were kidnapped as children. Some teenagers when they are reunited with their families feel as if they are returning home. Others do not remember or recognise their natural parents. It is unclear if family ties which have been so brutally broken can be mended. In Luanda, Angola, Save the Children Fund (SCF) is trying to trace and reunite families separated by war.

'We are only trying to give the child the right to know who he is' Jon de Cortina, The Search for Disappeared Children 'It's difficult to reunify them' Gillian Forest, SCF

home | help | child soldiers | wounded children lost children | child-headed households | child workers | feedback