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This country care review includes the care-related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee 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.
Principal findings of study revealed that institutionalization is becoming an option for families in difficult circumstances in the absence of alternative forms of care (for a summary of the key findings, click here). While government policies explicitly state that poverty should not be an admission criterion, 50% of children in voluntary institutions were there for poverty. Moreover, 80% of children in non-state institutions (generally termed “orphanages”) had at least one living parent…
The world’s governments have promised to provide improved protection to children in difficult circumstances and tackle the root causes leading to such circumstances. Failure to act – to back up the good intention with practical measures that bring about a safer world for children – really does not honour the world’s promise to the child, nor the promise and potential of the child. In ten years, will the Secretary General of the United Nations again need to say to the children of the world, “We have failed you”?
Children at Risk is a follow-up to World Vision’s earlier…
Findings from a Dutch television program have inspired the Government of Netherlands to call for an investigation into the irregularities in adoptions from Sri Lanka. Investigative journalists claim that at least 11,000 babies from Sri Lanka adopted by foreign couples were either bought or stolen from their parents.
The Government of Sri Lanka has announced an inquiry into adoption fraud following claims that thousands of babies were taken from their mothers and sold to foreign nationals in the 1980s.
Although Sri Lanka's common law does not allow underage marriages, the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) allows community leaders to determine the marriage age. Muslim women activists are now coming forward to open up a discussion about reform, including the young girl featured in this article.