Children on the run

Tens of thousands of Yazidis have fled the terror group "Islamic State" in Iraq this past year. Nobody knows when they will be able to return to their home villages in the Sinjar Mountains. Like this boy in a refugee camp in Silopi near the Turkish-Iraqi border, they are still looking towards an uncertain future.

In many German municipalities, people seeking refuge have to be accommodated in emergency shelters set up in large halls. In this gymnasium in the northern Bavarian town of Neustadt bei Coburg, a child helps to get the camp beds ready for the night.

Although this little girl is stranded in a border area between Greece and Macedonia, she still manages a confident grin. In the past few weeks, thousands of people have tried to pass through the region to catch trains to Serbia, then onwards to Hungary.

In a crowded train traveling from Budapest to Munich, refugee children sleep in the passageway. Like thousands of other people, they're making the attempt to reach western Europe via the Balkans. Hungary, like other EU nations, let them through for a short while, before sealing off its borders.

In Yemen, tens of thousands of people have packed up their families and belongings to escape the violence in one of the Arab world's poorest countries. Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government troops have been warring for months. Among the thousands of dead are many children.

Without help from abroad, many people in Syria would not be able to survive. These children are patiently waiting for food parcels at a tent city set up in Idlib.

How to buy a ticket for local public transport is just one of the many things newcomers to Germany need to learn. Here, the minister of transport for Saxony-Anhalt, Thomas Webel, gives refugee children a lesson in how to use a ticket machine.

The International Organization for Migration counts more than 121,000 people as having crossed the Mediterranean from Africa to Italy in unseaworthy boats so far this year. More than 2,600 have died in the attempt. Most of those who make want to travel further north. For this child and his family, the refugee camp on the Italian island of Lampedusa is probably only a transit station.

Going to school provides a little diversion from the otherwise dreary everyday life at Thet Kel Pyin refugee camp in Myanmar. Thousands of members of the Rohingya Muslim minority have been driven from their villages. They have fled to other parts of the Southeast Asian country or abroad.

In many conflicts in African nations, children have been forced to fight. It's only rarely that children and adolescents are freed from the clutches of militias, such as here in the Central African Republic.

The terror group Boko Haram spreads fear and horror in northern Nigeria and neighboring countries. The United Nations children's organization UNICEF estimates that about 1.4 million children are fleeing from Boko Haram. Here, refugee children receive a meal at the Geidam registration center in Nigeria.