Better Care Network highlights recent news pieces related to the issue of children's care around the world. These pieces include newspaper articles, interviews, audio or video clips, campaign launches, and more.
New York, NY, March 7, 2022 — The International Rescue Committee (IRC) warns that of the over 1.5 million refugees that have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the vast majority are women and children at grave risk of violence, exploitation and abuse.
Kaouthar Oudrhiri Nadia was just 16 when she was married off to a violent husband old enough to be her father — an ordeal thousands of Moroccan girls face every year due to a legal loophole. "I went through hell. But the nightmare is behind me now," she said. Nadia, from a remote part of the North African kingdom's Anti-Atlas mountains, managed to win a divorce after a year of marriage.
UNICEF estimates that 7.5 million children in Ukraine are in danger from the conflict and require urgent assistance. Shelling has hit hospitals, restricted the work of emergency services and is creating a major wave of trauma among the young. Half a million children have fled out of Ukraine with their families.
Nikolai Kuleba is the ombudsman for children with the office of the president of Ukraine. This is an extract from his opinion piece in The Guardian: "Daily, parents call me pleading for assistance to evacuate their children, willing to take any risk to find safety. I cannot help them all now. I cannot tell them they are wrong to ask."
The exodus from the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia and from across Ukraine has been underway since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, 2022, with more than a million refugees pouring into neighboring countries. The pace of evacuations from Zaporizhzhia has escalated since Thursday evening, when the nearby nuclear power station in Enerhodar was captured by Russian soldiers, who set fire to a training building adjacent to the plant. Some residents fear the Russians will attack the city itself next, or try to impose power blackouts.
Hundreds of Ukraine’s Roma people face an uncertain future in Moldova’s capital Chisinau as many are not documented.
As the Russian Army bears down on Ukraine from the north, south and east, a mass migration of millions of civilians is gathering like a storm over the plains. But the international border gates are a painful filter, splitting families apart. The Ukrainian government has mandated that men aged 18 to 60 are not allowed to leave the country, so the crowds pouring into Poland, Hungary and other neighboring nations are eerily devoid of men.
Children who are too sick to go home or flee the capital shelter from Russian missiles in a Kyiv hospital.
Evacuation trains from Ukraine to Poland have become lifelines for women and children forced to evacuate the most hard-hit centres of Ukraine.
“Care” or “foster care” is often depicted as a system that protects children from parents who hurt them. The truth, however, is that the state often removes children from loving families simply because they are poor. Ironically, a system meant to protect children ends up causing them immeasurable harm.