T&T rat­i­fied the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child on De­cem­ber 5, 1991, two years af­ter it was adopt­ed by the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

That means, at least in the­o­ry, that the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that all chil­dren in this coun­try are al­lowed to grow, learn, play and de­vel­op in a healthy and safe en­vi­ron­ment. That right ex­tends to all chil­dren liv­ing with­in T&T’s bor­ders, in­clud­ing the thou­sands of mi­grant chil­dren who have sought refuge here from eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal tur­moil in Venezuela.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, for many of the mi­grant chil­dren in this coun­try, apart from the trau­ma of be­ing dis­placed and en­dur­ing the short and treach­er­ous voy­age across the Gulf of Paria to get to these shores, there are dai­ly dif­fi­cul­ties and un­cer­tain­ties.

Re­ports in re­cent weeks of mi­grant chil­dren be­ing used by adults to beg and sell on the streets war­rant an ur­gent re­sponse from the au­thor­i­ties. The sight of these mi­nors, in­clud­ing in­fants, out on busy thor­ough­fares in the sun and rain, ex­posed to dust and ve­hi­cle ex­haust, is dis­turb­ing.

Ear­li­er this week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed on six mi­grant fam­i­lies who have been beg­ging and sell­ing drinks and snacks on the Munroe Road Fly­over in Ch­agua­nas.

They claimed to have no choice but to keep their chil­dren with them be­cause they can’t go to school.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that more than 3,000 mi­grant chil­dren be­tween the ages of five to 17 have been de­nied ac­cess to for­mal ed­u­ca­tion — a sore point that the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has avoid­ed ad­dress­ing for years.

While the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has promised to take ac­tion in the in­ter­est of mi­grant chil­dren who are be­ing ex­ploit­ed, there is no in­di­ca­tion that the big­ger prob­lem of their ex­clu­sion from the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem will be tack­led any­time soon.

The re­al­i­ty is that they will be at risk of ex­ploita­tion or worse, as long as they con­tin­ue to miss out on ed­u­ca­tion.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has had lit­tle to say about this wor­ry­ing sit­u­a­tion but the pre­vail­ing opin­ion is there are con­cerns that there are not enough spaces to in­te­grate mi­grant chil­dren in­to the pub­lic school sys­tem.

How­ev­er, so­lu­tions must be found for these chil­dren who have a right to ed­u­ca­tion but who have missed years of school since ar­riv­ing in T&T and suf­fered a dis­rup­tion to their nor­mal de­vel­op­ment that se­vere­ly com­pro­mis­es their fu­tures.

Mi­grant chil­dren are en­ti­tled to the same help and pro­tec­tion and have the same rights as chil­dren born in T&T. The fact that they are de­prived adds to their strug­gles in ad­just­ing to the cul­tur­al and so­cial en­vi­ron­ment here.

They are like­ly to face long-term phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties be­cause of the ways they and their fam­i­lies are made to feel mar­gin­alised and help­less while liv­ing here.

Life is dis­tress­ing enough for these dis­placed chil­dren. The op­por­tu­ni­ty to at­tend school would be a way to keep them off the streets and give them ac­cess to a sta­ble en­vi­ron­ment which fa­cil­i­tates their men­tal and emo­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Ig­nor­ing this prob­lem won’t make it go away. It will just con­tin­ue to fes­ter, adding to the many so­cial prob­lems al­ready af­fect­ing this coun­try.

How­ev­er, find­ings so­lu­tions will re­quire con­cert­ed ef­forts from Gov­ern­ment and lo­cal NGOs in col­lab­o­ra­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions. That should be made a pri­or­i­ty.