IN every corner of the globe I’ve seen them suffer. In the dense bush country of the Democratic Republic of Congo, I’ve watched them trudge wearily through the mud and downpours of the rainy season. In the high Hindu Kush mountain range of Afghanistan, I’ve encountered them standing shivering in sub-zero temperatures, barefoot in the snow. On the beaches of the Greek islands, I’ve witnessed them come ashore in the dark of night from flimsy rubber rafts, soaked, confused, exhausted and above all, afraid.

Many never finish their journey, falling instead by the wayside. There is no end to the number of ways they die: hunger, disease, drowning, shooting, bombing and sometimes at the cruel hands of those who seek to exploit their vulnerability.

This is the world of the child refugee; a nightmarish world the UK promised it would help some children escape from. Instead, in a move scarcely less mercenary and cynical than the people traffickers who exploit refugees, Tory ministers this week betrayed these children.

Quietly and without the remotest hint of contrition, the UK Government announced it would end a scheme to help lone vulnerable child refugees less than a year after it was introduced. In all, “Great” Britain accepted just 350 children, barely one-tenth of the 3,000 requested by 84-year-old peer Lord Alfred “Alf “ Dubs, who was saved from Nazi persecution after fleeing on the Kindertransport programme before the Second World War.

It was Lord Dubs who, in an amendment to immigration legislation introduced last May, helped create the scheme through which it was hoped these 3,000 children would find sanctuary in the UK in the wake of the European refugee crisis.

This week he could only watch from the political sidelines as the UK Government reneged on its promise. Announcing the end of the Dubs scheme, immigration minister Robert Goodwill insisted the UK could be “proud” of its efforts helping refugees. While this might have had some truth in the past, at present it has a hollow ring. This was a decision that was, cold, calculated and carried out, probably deliberately, while most eyes were focused on the Brexit debacle.

In its execution it carried with it the political duplicity and double standards that have become the hallmarks of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Government. This is a government that sells arms to the Saudis who bomb Yemeni civilians but that talks of “British” values and upholding human rights.

It’s a government that, in the name of maintaining a “special relationship”, insists on cosying up to the most dangerous and divisive US president in living memory, a man who has made it his personal mission to build walls and close refugee programmes.

We saw in the UK decision what one commentator rightly called “British Trumpism”. In a world whose moral compass seems to have gone haywire, more than ever we need to do what it takes to help those who find themselves displaced by conflict, famine and persecution.

If refugee children, often alone and always vulnerable, are not fully deserving of this, then we have no right to speak meaningfully of “values”. More than half of the world’s refugees are children. We cannot and should not turn our back on this appalling fact. All around us, their plight is inescapable.

Barely days before efforts were made to keep the UK’s decision on the Dubs scheme away from the headlines, another story in Spain barely had a mention. It concerned the fate of a little boy who was washed up on a Spanish beach near Cadiz. No one is quite sure of his identity but some reports suggest his name was Samuel, he was six-years-old and he was from the Congo.

His death, after the boat sank in which he was travelling from North Africa, has prompted comparisons with that of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian Kurdish boy whose body was washed up after he drowned in the Mediterranean while fleeing the war in Syria two years ago.

The world cried out then but today, more often, stifles those cries or turns the other way to the plight of Samuel and others like him. While little Samuel and Alan were in the company of family when they died, many child refugees make such journeys alone. Lucky enough to make it to Europe, they, unlike adults, are invisible and voiceless.

Regardless of their circumstances, these children hanker desperately for safety and stability. In places such as Serbia and elsewhere in central Europe, refugee children are sleeping rough in the streets in sub-zero temperatures. Perhaps 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees have disappeared and many have probably fallen into the hands of criminal trafficking syndicates, according to the EU’s criminal intelligence agency Europol.

There are other predators. As the Quilliam Foundation, a UK-based counter-extremism think tank has revealed, terrorist groups such as Islamic State are targeting unaccompanied child refugees in conflict-zone camps. The jihadists distribute food and try to buy allegiance from desperate youngsters by funding the first leg of their journey to Europe.

Some will argue that this is why we need to keep refugees out but they are wrong. Such instances are still rare in the tide of needy youngsters trying to make their way to safety. If there is any justification in the security argument, it only adds to the case for a policy that embraces security concerns but, above all, is driven by a humanitarian and moral imperative.

I read a story recently about how, 80 years ago, John Langdon-Davies, a war correspondent like me, came across a young boy alone with a note around his neck at a train station during the Spanish Civil War. It read: “This is Jose. I am his father and when Santander falls, I will be shot. Whoever finds my son, please take care of him.”

Langdon-Davies did not turn away but campaigned for the rest of his life for children orphaned by war and other circumstances they had no part in making. Just as in those dark days of the 1930’s, in today’s troubled political times it’s all too easy to blame outsiders and shut our doors, borders and hearts to the world’s most vulnerable.

We need to do what our instincts tell us is right when protecting refugee children, not what some of our politicians would have us believe is right. Lord Alf Dubs and Langdon-Davies were right in what they did. The UK Government’s decision on refugee children this week was wrong, shamefully so.