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Audit of the Frameworks for the Regulation of Legal Guardianship of Children Under International Law
Abstract
Since the adoption of the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child in 1924, much advancement has been made on the international protection of the rights of children internationally, with the adoption of the CRC and the ACRW. These instruments require states to give specific and special legal protection to children without parental care. The stipulation is found in various provisions of the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, the CRC and the ACRWC. The UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (the Guidelines), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2010…
This brief reference surveys the national policy of three representative African countries on the legal guardianship of children who are without parents or families. Focusing on the widely varying legal systems of Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, and Uganda, the authors highlight guardianship as emblematic of the continent’s shortcomings in child protection laws. The book’s key objective is bridging the communal aspects of traditional African society with the global standards set forth by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international entities. To this end, the three frameworks…
This chapter discusses the practice of child circulation in Ghana. Coe notes that in Ghana, child circulation is not meant to break a child’s connection with biological parents. It is meant to increase the child’s social connections and support structure. Per Coe, when Ghanaians go abroad, they often look to place their children in other households, generally in the homes of people not related to them in the country of migration. Traditionally in Ghana, children are known to belong to multiple mothers and fathers.
Coe discusses the two types of circulation associated with…
This report - produced by SOS Children’s Villages, Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland, and the University of Malawi - is based on a synthesis of eight assessments of the implementation of the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (“the Guidelines”) in Benin, Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
It considers common challenges to implementing the Guidelines identified in the eight countries and provides a platform for effective advocacy to promote every child’s right to quality care. At the end of each chapter, the report provides…
Informal kinship care practices are widespread in the West Central Africa region. An estimated 15.8% of children in West Central Africa do not live with their biological parents. However, only a very small number (0.002%) live in formal alternative care (including residential care) while the majority live in informal care alternatives, especially with their extended family in kinship care. A regional Save the Children participatory research initiative 2012-2013 was undertaken to build knowledge on endogenous care practices within families and communities, especially informal kinship…
Over the last decade, research in basic human development has revealed that institutional care - particularly when used to serve children under five - is not an appropriate form of alternative care, and instead of protecting children can put them at further risk of harm. Efforts have been made to transition international thinking away from the use of orphanage-based systems and toward providing family-based care. With this in mind, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s (CCAI) The Way Forward Project brought together a group of…
Although previous research often assumes that household structure is exogenous, the results of this paper provide strong evidence against the validity of that assumption. This paper analyzes a household’s decision to adjust its composition by sending and receiving children and finds that a household is significantly more likely to send out a child if it experiences a negative income shock, has a better quality social network, or has additional children in a given age and gender class. Quantifying the magnitude of this impact shows that increases of one standard deviation in a household’s…
We examine the impact of orphanhood on children’s school enrollment in 10 Sub-Saharan African countries. Although poorer children in Africa are less likely to attend school, the lower enrollment of orphans is not accounted for solely by their poverty. We find orphans are less likely to be enrolled than are non-orphans with whom they live. Consistent with Hamilton’s Rule, the theory that the closeness of biological ties governs altruistic behavior, outcomes for orphans depend on the relatedness of orphans to their household heads. The lower enrollment of orphans is largely explained caregivers…