The Countries Detaining The Most Migrant Children

Today marks World Children's Day and it was established in 1954 to promote international togetherness, awareness and the improvement of children's welfare. In advance of this year's event, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report into the status of children held in detention worldwide, particularly those being held in migrant detention.

The research was lead by Professor Manfred Nowak and he was widely quoted by news organizations when he said that 100,000 children were being held in migrant-detention in the United States. It later emerged that the latest figure his team could find was actually from 2015 - 103,140 - something which prompted a number of media outlets to withdraw the story. The following infographic takes the 2015 figure and compares it to the highest totals of other countries in his report.

Mexico was the country with the second highest total with just over 18,000 migrant children detained while France came third with 2,768. It's important to note that the vast majority of France's total, 2,493 children, were placed in migrant detention in the overseas department of Mayotte.