Without the opportunity to learn to read, write and count, the future for these already vulnerable children is nothing but bleak, with greater risk of exploitation and violence.
"It's a very bleak dilemma, whether to risk to stay or risk their lives leaving, so there's nothing to be confident about, [and] the longer this takes, the more desperate their situation will become," he added.
A video shot by a foreign mountaineer in September, showing a young nun being shot by Chinese border guards, was a bleak reminder of the risks they run.
But he warns that if corporates and politicians continue to bury their heads in the sand, then the UK risks a bleak future, including major flooding in London and a further loss of business competitiveness.
The bleak alternative is that you risk raping someone.
The alternative, he feared, was a bleak job market and the risk of nothing at all.
The progress that has been made in tackling Aids in Africa is at risk, shows a bleak report by the US Institute of Medicine.
Traditionally, one worry with thinkers who dispense with the idea that there are facts outside our particular vantage point is that they risk licensing a bleak worldview.
Chastised, funny, boastful, bleak, these poems take great risks with decorum (poetic and otherwise) in order to authenticate their artlessness.
Many children face the bleak choice of either joining a gang and risking a violent death, or refusing to join -- and risking a violent death.
The prospects for that condition are bleak enough to allow for a degree of risk that might not be acceptable in less serious types of cancer, Gorelick concludes.
