Today, an estimated 20 million children are displaced by armed conflict or human rights violations.

The case for developing international guidelines on the archiving and management of the records of separated children rests at the intersection of children's rights and theories of child development.

Promoting the concept of children as owners of rights and as actors in their own development has been the challenge taken up by UNICEF in Latin America.

The need to protect refugees from threats from humanitarian workers did not receive much attention until the recent release of findings from the joint UNHCR and Save the Children UK report on the sexual exploitation of refugee children in West Africa.

The grave allegations of widespread sexual exploitation and abuse of refugee and internally displaced women and children by humanitarian workers and peacekeepers in West Africa have highlighted the vulnerability of refugees, IDPs and others, especially women and girls.

UNICEF and its partners work with displaced communities to provide material assistance and protection, using as their basis the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international legal instruments. Education has proven a valuable tool in this effort, not only making children aware of their rights but providing a way to participate in the realisation of these rights.

Emergencies present an opportunity to influ-ence or change what children learn so that itbecomes more relevant to their everyday lives.

Over the past decade humanitarian actors have focused attention and resources on developing education as a specific intervention aimed at mitigating some of the physical and psychosocial distress affecting children during war.

In 2000, the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children initiated a 'series of four action-oriented, participatory studies with adolescents affected by armed conflict'.

This article is based upon research conducted early in 2002 in the Batticaloa and Ampara Districts of eastern Sri Lanka, a rural region which has witnessed nearly two decades of inter-ethnic conflict.

For more than half a century Palestinian children and their care givers have lived a temporary existence in the dramatic and politically volatile landscape of the Middle East.