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The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC/the Committee), in collaboration with African Union Member States, partner organizations, children and young people, launched the first of its kind Continental Study on Children Without Parental Care (CWPC) in Africa. The study, conducted from 2020 to 2022, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, covered over 43 countries in the five regions of Africa.
This issue brief from the UNHCR highlights key messages from UNHCR in regards to family tracing and reunification. The brief outlines the importance of children growing up in a safe family environment and the positive impact this has on a child's psychological, cognitive and physical development. In the best case, alternative care is only required as an interim measure while family tracing is carried out and until the time when children can be reunited with parents or family members.This brief is part of a series developed by UNHCR which aims to guide field operations on key thematic child…
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
Globalization of knowledge and scholarship raises the challenges of dialogue between Global North and South. Northern knowledge and voice remain privileged, while writing from the South often goes unread. This is true also in emerging adulthood and care-leaving scholarship. The special issue of Emerging Adulthood titled “Care-Leaving in Africa” is the first collection of essays on care-leaving by African scholars. It presents both care-leaving and emerging adulthood scholars from the Global North a unique opportunity to consider the implications of a rising…
Abstract
This chapter, which is the core of the book, is comprised of two studies. The first study provides an analysis of the psychological situation of street children and youth in Yaoundé and Douala, while the second one deals with resilience building within a rehabilitation home. The first study was made up of a sample of 508 street children and youths. A comparison between a sample of 254 children and youths of the street (working and living on the street) and that of 254 children and youths on the street (working on the street but living off the…
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.
This article discusses the major population displacement that unfolded in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin. Local communities have offered shelter to 2.6 million people who were forced to leave their homes. This document discusses how the international community needs to act immediately to scale up humanitarian assistance in the Lake Chad Basin region.
Factors that have added to the complexity of the humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad region include ongoing violence and conflict since 2013, poverty, and climate change. Many children have been reported to be a part of the conflict to the…
Abstract
Since the early 2000s, the government of Cameroon has implemented three major initiatives directed at orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) due to HIV/AIDS. These are children whose survival, well-being and development are being compromized by HIV and AIDS. The initiatives are namely; the bi multi-OVC program (2004–2008), the National Support Program for OVC (NSP-OVC 2006–2010), and the Children, HIV and AIDS program (2008–2012). Behind each of these initiatives stands a foreign and institutional operator (UNICEF, the French Cooperation, and the Global Fund). The implementation of…
The devastating consequences of HIV/AIDS on African societies, and its particular impact on children, is requiring every organisation involved in fighting the epidemic to find new strategies to address adequately both the scale of the problem and its duration. The crisis of children left behind by AIDS is a humanitarian, development and human rights challenge of unprecedented proportions.
Although there have been substantial gains in improving overall child survival, these gains are being eroded in African countries hardest hit by the epidemic. The scale of the epidemic on this…