Ammon News - In less than three weeks, around 1.5 million children have fled Ukraine, meaning nearly one child has become a refugee every second, the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said on Wednesday.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva that on average, every day over the last 20 days in Ukraine, more than 70,000 children have become refugees, adding "that amounts to around 55 every minute, so almost one per second."

The spokesman stressed that "this crisis in terms of speed and scale is unprecedented since World War II."

Elder warned that Ukrainian children arriving in those border countries are at significant risk of family separation, violence, sexual exploitation and trafficking, indicating that they're in desperate need of safety, stability and child protection services.