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Child Rights Connect delivered a written and oral statement to the UN Human Rights Council on 4 March 2019 at an event to promote the empowerment of children with disabilities to enjoy their full human rights, including through inclusive education. The statement was endorsed by many child rights organizations including SOS Children's Villages, EuroChild, Hope and Homes for Children, Save the Children, Terre des Hommes, and more. In the statement, Child Rights Connect says that children with disabilities "are much more likely to grow up in alternative care and face heightened risk of…
Sreyny Sorn, manager of the ABLE Project at Children in Families, gave a presentation at a side event at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 5 March, 2019. The event was titled “Promoting Quality Family and Community-Based Care for Children with Disabilities.” BCN nominated Sorn to speak about the ABLE program and how they work to place children with disabilities in suitable foster or kinship homes in Cambodia by supporting children and families.
Sorn described how she and the ABLE team recruit foster families to care for children with disabilites and how the…
In this article, a Human Rights Watch researcher describes her personal experiences meeting adults and children in the Western Balkans who have spent their lives hidden away in institutions because they have a disability. These individuals are often subject to abuse, forced medical treatments, and limited freedom of movement. Children are especially vulnerable to abuse and suffer physical, emotional and intellectual delays as a result of isolation and neglect. The authors calls not only on governments to work towards deinstitutionalization, but on all people to end the pervasive…
In this article for Prism Magazine, a publication of Evangelicals for Social Action, the authors ask challenging questions about the active role played by the Western Church "not only in funding orphanages where they may not be needed but also encouraging "orphanage tourism" disguised in the form of short-term mission trips." They review the evidence from global research that has demonstrated the adverse impacts of residential care on the development of children and their protection rights, and ask some challenging questions: "Why are orphanages unacceptable…
The war in Ukraine has forced millions to flee the country, but some of the most vulnerable have been left behind. NBC’s Richard Engel reports for TODAY on the Vilshanka Orphan House. Warning: some of the images in this report may be distressing.
Jeanne Uwamariya's firstborn Gloria Abijuru was born with a physical disability. The father to her children with whom they were not legally married abandoned his family when Abijuru was just 3 years old.
This meant that Uwamariya would shoulder all the responsibilities of fending for the children alone.
Challenged by domestic pressures, she was forced to withdraw Abijuru from school more especially because it was far away from their home.
"As the COVID-19 pandemic surges into its second year, advocates and experts say children with special needs and their families are seeing some of the toughest impacts," says this article from Global News. According to the article, nearly one in 10 families of children with special needs surveyed in a recent study by Simon Fraser University researchers said they were considering putting their child in government care.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, life in residential facilities for people with disabilities in South Korea has become even more precarious, if not deadly, said Lee Jung-ha, who heads the advocacy group Padosan, in an interview for this article from Hankyoreh. The article describes the conditions of these facilities, noting that "some people with physical and developmental disabilities also spend their entire lives in institutions, researcher Seo Won-sun says, adding that up until a few decades ago, it was not uncommon for parents to 'abandon' their disabled children in large…
Earlier this year, the U.S. state of Rhode Island’s foster care system was in the spotlight because of the death of a 9-year-old child in state care. A searing report on the death from the Child Advocate blamed the state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families for failing to step in. It also revealed the extent to which the well-being of foster children depends on the capacity of their foster parents. This is especially true for foster kids with serious medical conditions. As part of The Public's Radio series Living In Limbo, this segment features one family working to get the care…
Kenya: Handicapped children seen as a 'curse' & misfortune that certain mothers deserve, says report
New research has revealed that nearly half of Kenyan mothers with disabled babies are pressured to kill them. The report by Disability Rights International carried out over two years also found that mothers themselves are often blamed for having disabled children. The majority of the women interviewed said disabled children were considered a curse. Infanticide under Kenyan law is defined as the systematic and deliberate killing of children below one year old either at birth or afterwards. According to the Kenyan police service, there were 42 cases of infanticide in 2016. In this segment,…