The Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report Wednesday night detailing the struggles of unaccompanied refugee children in Greece. The report found that Greek authorities have failed to adequately protect refugee children by falsely registering them as adults. The HRW talked to twenty minors, some as young as fifteen, who were falsely registered as adults by the Greek authorities.

Under international law, unaccompanied child refugees are granted special accommodations, including additional care and protection. However, many minors are being denied this help. Additionally, it can take months to change their status and many minors “age out” in the process. Without protection, children refugees are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and human trafficking. According to Eva Cosse, an HRW researcher for Greece, “the misidentification of unaccompanied migrant kids on Lesbos as adults leads to real problems, including lumping them together with unrelated adults and denying them the care they need.”

2016 was a record year for refugees and displaced persons and the problem only continues to grow. According to the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees (UNHCR), a total of 65.5 million people were displaced from their homes due to persecution by the end of 2016. To put this into perspective, the UNHCR writes, “this equates to one person becoming displaced every three seconds – less than the time it takes to read this sentence.” Children make up 22.5 million refugees around the world. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 300,000 of these displaced children are unaccompanied. Justin Forsyth, the deputy executive director of UNICEF,  states that “one child moving alone is too many, and yet today, there are a staggering number of children doing just that-we as adults are failing to protect them.”

Statistics do not show the full story of the horrors for refugee children. According to the executive director of UNICEF, Anthony Lake, “this is a real child ripped from home, maybe even from a family, facing horrors we can only begin to comprehend.” Most refugee children live in either formal or impromptu camps that are overcrowded. Most have little access to basic resources, live in unsanitary conditions, and are unable to attend school. One such camp in Calais, France, the Jungle, has no running water and is plagued by rats. The British Red Cross calls the conditions “dreadful” and Doctors of the World refer to the Jungle as “diabolical.” According to Jana Mason, a UNHCR senior advisor, “so many children are suffering from psycho-social trauma. They’ve witnessed horrific, horrific things. I met a boy with burns on his face after a house he was in exploded. Another boy I met was so traumatized by his experiences that he could barely move. These kids need a lot of social and psychological support.”

Sarah Crowe, a spokesperson for UNICEF, claims most refugees do not anticipate the problems they encounter once they reach Europe. “There is an assumption that everything is under control when they arrive on the European shores, but it’s actually just the beginning of a new phase of their journey.” Political infighting, as well as an irrational fear of refugees, has caused many countries to close their borders and make the process of resettling into their country significantly more complicated. In 2015, members of the EU agreed to take a larger share of refugees from overburdened countries like Greece and Italy. However, since then such countries, like Germany, have created their own restrictions.

Based simply on geography and proximity to Syria, Greece receives more refugees than any other European country. The problem has only worsened after the EU reached a deal with Turkey in March 2016. The deal agreed to send most refugees back to Turkey, the country with the largest number of refugees, and allowed countries across the Balkans, including Macedonia, Serbia, and Croatia, to close their borders. As a result, this has created a bottle-necking of refugees on the islands of Greece; refugees are not allowed onto Greece’s mainland unless their asylum seeker status is accepted. There are over ten thousand refugees on only a few Aegean islands.

In the mess of paperwork, restrictive borders, and politics, refugee children are lost. Despite international law, many countries, including Greece, fail to protect children. Helen Stalford, a scholar of European children’s rights at the University of Liverpool writes, “the problem is that EU law does not supply any real, clear explanation of how ‘best interests’ should be implemented. When it comes down to the practical application, there are so many different actors that they’re not necessarily doing this in a way that is transparent, consistent, or rigorous.” According to Europol, an agency within the European Union, over ten thousand refugee children have gone missing since 2014. Additionally, John Forsyth reminds us that this number may be much larger. “Any children who never register fall into the hands of smugglers. The real number is much bigger. We lack an enormous amount of data.”

In Greece, the process to become an asylum seeker and reach the mainland can drag on for years. Meanwhile, according to the HRW, 1,149 children are on a waiting list to receive shelter. In England, politicians have not accepted any children in 2017. During April 2016, the Dubs Amendment was passed in order to allow 480 children into the UK after local activists campaigned for the UK to take three thousand children from a closing refugee camp in Calais, France. However, the UK only transferred two hundred children and 280 spots remained open. According to a member of UNICEF UK, Lily Caprani, “it’s unacceptable that we have seen no children brought under the Dubs scheme this year. As a nation we showed our compassion and our principles when we helped refugee children stranded in Calais, but we were told this was not the end of the story. We are seeing too many children still having to make dangerous journeys to reach safety.”

In 2017, we have failed refugee children, particularly those who are forced to make the dangerous journey from home alone. Children are being left behind as victims of a system that falsely claims to protect them. We all need to do better. First, international laws need to specify the exact needs of refugee children so no one falls through the cracks. This means countries must provide shelter, food, water, and safety to these children. Second, refugee children must not be treated as adults but rather receive special care and supervision that makes them less vulnerable to human traffickers. Third, these children deserve access to a proper education like other children. Countries can no longer make excuses to the poor conditions their refugee children face. Countries must work together to ensure a safe place for children fleeing their homes. If not, children will continue to lose hope of ever reaching their future.