The report "A Deadly Journey for Children: The Deadly Central Meditarranean Route" describes how thousands of migrants are leaving countries such as Mali, Nigeria, Eritrea and Sudan and transversing the Saharan desert of North Africa to eventually reach Europe. Many of the migrants won't make it, as they face unbearable heat, dehydration and abuse -- especially while passing through the main transit country, Libya. The route is particularly tough on children, the report states. UNICEF interviewed 122 migrants in Libya, among them 82 women and 40 children between 10 to 17 years old . Of the children interviewed, two-thirds said that they had experienced some form of abuse, whether it be emotional, physical, or sexual.  Some of the children said the abuse they experienced was by the hands of men in security uniforms, others claimed it was from smugglers who promised to take them across the Mediterranean towards Italy. Nine percent children migrants "Nearly half of the 122 migrants interviewed reported sexual abuse during migration, often multiple times and in multiple locations" the report continued. "50 million children are on the move, some fleeing violence, war, poverty and climate change. They shouldn't be forced to put their lives in the hands of smugglers or be left vulnerable to human  traffickers. We need to address globally the drivers of migration and as importantly put in place stronger measures to protect children on the move through a system of safe passage for all refugee and migrant children," said  Afshan Khan, a regional director for UNICEF in Europe. Of the 256,000 migrants in Libya, 23,000 or nine percent of them are children. It's also estimated that one-third of them are unaccompanied. 'Living hellholes' Many of the migrants in Libya wind up in detention centers, where there is a lack of food, a spread of contagious diseases and abuse by the hands of the security guards. They are run by militias that are independent of the government, due to Libya's chaotic political situation. The UNICEF report describes them as "living hellholes where people were held for months at a time without any form of due process, in squalid, cramped conditions." Some cells have up to twenty people crammed into two square meters and can have adverse psychological effects. Children do not receive any preferential treatment in the centers and are subject to the same conditions as everyone else, and many of them are unaccompanied. Massive smuggling operation Human smugglers coordinate the journey migrants take from Sub-Saharan Africa through the Mediterranean -- but at a price. According to the report, 4,468 migrants relied on human smugglers as of January 2017 to get to Italy, and that in that same month, 1 in 21 migrants died trying to make the journey. Many migrants are forced to work for the smugglers in order to afford the trip, if they can afford it at all. "The Central Mediterranean Route has become a massive human smuggling operation, which has grown out of control for the lack of safe and alternative migration systems. It exploits porous and corrupt border security, the sparse Saharan terrain, and the vaccum created by the Libyan conflict" the report concludes. To read the report in full: https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/EN_UNICEF_Central_Mediterranean_Migration.pdf   Author: Wesley Dockery