A/HRC/36/51 of the migrant children interviewed said they had experienced violence, harassment or aggression at the hands of adults.7 13. In the case of migrants from the northern triangle of Central America, the level of education is insufficient to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty that constitutes a key factor in children’s migration.8 Migrants living in low-income countries tend to be younger than in high-income countries. 9 In Central America, an increasing number of young people are forced to migrate because of threats and violence. 14. In Colombia, there are many reports of teenagers who have left their places of origin because of violence and have never applied for refugee status. This phenomenon is also beginning to appear in some isolated cases in the Dominican Republic, where adolescents migrate because of violence and for economic reasons. In the case of children in the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Ecuador, the main motivation is economic. Cases of children who have migrated as a result of natural disasters are also reported, mainly in the case of Haiti. 15. Many countries stated that children have described irregular migration as a “necessary risk” since they feel they have to leave and hope to improve their situation by doing so. Studies of perceptions show that children see the authorities as an obstacle to reaching their destination; in very few cases are the authorities associated with an obligation to protect children’s rights.10 16. According to interviews conducted with 10,166 unaccompanied migrant children in 2015 by the Social Welfare Department and the Attorney General’s Office of Guatemala, 67 per cent travelled searching for work and 23 per cent for family reunification; 2 per cent were looking for better opportunities and 0.4 per cent did not give a reason. Only 0.1 per cent mentioned direct violence as the reason they moved. 17. In El Salvador, the returnees’ care centre cared for 4,114 migrant children between June 2014 and July 2015, of whom 45 per cent were unaccompanied. When asked about their reasons for migrating, 36.1 per cent of the children replied that they wanted to join their families, 31.7 per cent mentioned better living conditions and 27.5 per cent were motivated by threats. 11 Violence has become a growing factor in migration in Central America. In Honduras, it has been reported that parents send their children abroad to prevent them from being recruited by gang members. 12 18. There is a lack of strict criteria governing eligibility for regular channels of family reunification. In Europe, there are often minimum income requirements for adults who wish to sponsor their children for family reunification, which exclude low-income migrant workers and sometimes have a particularly discriminatory effect on migrant women. Despite the European Union-wide legislation on family reunification, there remain restrictions in some European Union member States in terms of the age of the child and the family members who are able to sponsor the child. Furthermore, some migrant workers are unable to apply for official family reunification because they do not have regular status as residents of the country of destination.13 19. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that 2.2 million people, of whom 1.5 million are children, have been displaced internally as a result of the conflict in north-eastern Nigeria, with nearly 400,000 Nigerian refugees and internally displaced people in neighbouring Chad, northern Cameroon and the Diffa region of the Niger. In Zimbabwe, which has seen a great increase in child migration flows in recent years, the main reported reasons for migration are: sexual abuse of children by caregivers, 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 UNICEF, “Migrants in Libya: insights into the experience of women and children in transit” (draft briefing paper) (New York, February 2017), p. 4. Source: Directorate of Human Rights Research, Office of the Human Rights Advocate, Guatemala. UNICEF, Uprooted, p. 6. Source: Nicaragua — SOS Children’s Villages International. Source: returnees’ care centre, El Salvador. Source: Office of the National Commissioner for Human Rights, Honduras. Source: Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants. 5