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ACERWC released a study on the structures and functions of NHRIs on child protection to assess how child rights issues are incorporated in their mandates. The study identifies challenges and proposes areas to strengthen collaboration. Specifically, the study:
- Examines the structures of NHRIs in Africa and how they have institutionalised children’s rights.
- Assesses the functions of African NHRIs in implementing children’s rights.
- Assesses budgetary allocations for NHRIs in relation to the protection, promotion and implementation of children’s rights.…
This article examines how language, liminality, and social marginalization converge in the institutional lives of two displaced children in Angola. A displaced child is very likely to be placed into institutionalized care, which in Angola exists in the form of centros de acolhimento, residential centers that house minors affected by orphanhood, poverty, displacement, or abandonment.
Drawing on one year of ethnographic research in two residential centers, the article argues that despite being sites of care and protection, some children come to desire living on the street…
This brochure from UNICEF provides an overview of child marriage in the Sahel, a region spanning the northern portion of sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this publication is to offer a descriptive analysis of the practice of child marriage in the Sahel, covering: the proportion and number of girls and women affected; disparities in risk across different populations; a selection of key outcome measures for women who married in childhood; an evaluation of historical trends in prevalence; and projections through 2030. It relies on nationally representative survey data, namely from the…
Abstract
Foster care is widely described as an effective approach for the relief and protection of children experiencing abuse and neglect in their homes. Less recognized is the particularly challenging experience of foster carers in “failed-state” settings and the resulting effects on foster children’s reintegration process. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, no public out-of-home care is established for vulnerable children. In July, 2017, “Foyer Ekabana”, launched a network of parents at parish level who willingly accepted to foster vulnerable children, named “Secours à l’…
Care arrangements—by parents, kin, or the state—are central to the well-being and mental health of children and youth (Coe 2012a). Over the past five years, the author of this paper has actively researched child fostering practices among transnational Cameroonian families. This study of distributed parenting and new ideas about what it means to raise a child properly is informed by over three decades of research among the Bamiléké. Originating in the mountainous Grassfields region straddling Cameroon’s Francophone/Anglophone divide, the author's research includes observations undertaken…
Abstract
Family constitutes more than simple living arrangements, and these systems are of pivotal development importance in sub-Saharan Africa. The diversity of family structures and types in sub-Saharan Africa has warranted an examination of the various policies and laws in the region. This paper examines all policy and laws related to families in the South, West, East and Central regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The paper highlights the sundry of policies and laws that are influenced by cultural and religious differences within and across regions. Issues relating to patriarchy and…
Abstract
Ritualistic child sexual abuse (RCSA) is an under-recognized and poorly addressed form of child maltreatment. Despite a relative decrease of war-related sexual violence in post-conflict Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the existing monitoring reports leave no doubt that RCSA remains a public health problem of high significance. While RCSA requires urgent action, little has been done to address it. This article critically examines RCSA as a predatory form of child maltreatment and the lack of relevant child welfare interventions to address it. Based on a broader empirical study…
This chapter appears in Child Maltreatment in Residential Care: History, Research, and Current Practice, a volume of research examining the institutionalization of children, child abuse and neglect in residential care, and interventions preventing and responding to violence against children living in out-of-home care settings around the world.
Abstract
In Sub-…
This country care review includes the care-related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child during the seventy-fifth session (15 May 2017 - 2 Jun 2017) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Committee’s recommendations on the issues relevant to children's care are highlighted, as well as other care-related concluding observations, ratification dates, and links to the Universal Periodic Review and Hague Intercountry Adoption Country Profile.
Introduction
This desk review is part of a wider study commissioned to SOS Children’s Villages International by the European Commission. The overall study aims to map the issue of alternative care and deinstitutionalization in countries in Asia, South and Central America, and Africa. It also seeks to increase the evidence on child protection, alternative care and deinstitutionalization and on how this can be addressed, in order to potentially inform future initiatives in these continents, at country or regional level.
The study comprises three continental desk reviews…