A/HRC/34/45 or not speak the local language. For the most part, they are simply too frightened to report incidents of abuse or to speak about the trauma they have endured. They do not seek help, including medical help, for fear of a negative impact on pending decisions on their status, or out of fear of arrest or deportation. 50. Many children end up in crowded facilities, often together with adults who are not family members. They may find themselves in places with fast-track proceedings, and in fact at high risk of “fast-return proceedings” where their best interests are hardly considered. They may end up confined in airports, at port facilities or on islands; placed in detention centres, prisons or cells for military personnel; and even put in containers with no windows, at times in complete isolation. 51. Their risk of deprivation of liberty is high. Children may be detained by invoking the need to secure their protection from the risk of disappearance or trafficking, or for the purpose of family tracing or to consider the options for return to their country of origin. Detaining these children, which is never in their best interests, is an additional punishment; the desired aims can be achieved in a different way. 52. While their fate is being decided, children may endure humiliation, physical attacks and sexual abuse. In many cases, they lack access to a child protection authority, to an ageand gender-sensitive protection determination process, to legal representation, to accessible information about their rights or about ways of seeking redress for the acts of violence they may have suffered. This may explain why large numbers of children go missing from reception centres or disappear from the care of child protection facilities or immigration authorities. 53. Time and time again, children on the move experience fear, anxiety, panic, depression, sleep disorders, mental health problems, increased risk of self-harm and an aggravated sense of hopelessness, with a severe impact on their development and wellbeing. These children have been left very far behind. For them, the ambitious vision of the 2030 Agenda seems distant and illusory. 54. For children on the move, as for any other child who is left behind, we need to transform the continuum of violence that shapes their life into a continuum of protection of their fundamental rights. The world must address these desperate situations urgently. Children’s freedom from violence is an ethical and a legal imperative and should not be met with indifference or complacency. It is crucial to strengthen and effectively resource child protection institutions to which children on the move can be referred, and to implement the existing standards and develop adequate monitoring tools to safeguard children’s care and safety, to promote durable solutions, to rapidly identify and address risks and to fight impunity. 55. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols, together with other international standards, including the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, 14 provide clear guidance on upholding children’s rights and preventing and eliminating the risks of violence in the lives of children on the move. Firstly, these standards recognize the imperative to act and to ensure without discrimination the realization of the rights of all children who fall under the jurisdiction of the State. This includes asylum-seeking, refugee, migrant and stateless children, and, in this context, we should recall that a child is born stateless every 10 minutes. 56. Secondly, international standards require the best interests of the child to be a primary consideration in all decisions affecting the child and at all times: upon arrival in a destination country, during relevant proceedings, or when the possibility of return is 14 General Assembly resolution 71/1. 13