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Hundreds of thousands of children across Europe are growing up in institutional care. The consequences are devastating for children, families and society. Opening Doors for Europe’s Children – a pan-European campaign advocating for strengthening families and ending institutional care – has created a new generation of country fact sheets that document the evidence on…
» A grandes rasgos, se identifica como “grandes instituciones” o macroinstituciones a centros de alojamiento que albergan una gran cantidad de niños y niñas. Sin embargo, la cantidad de niños alojados no es la única variable que define lo que se considera una gran institución: la relación entre capacidad y población real, y otras condiciones de funcionamiento que laceran los derechos fundamentales de quienes se encuentran internados también son parámetros indicadores de que se está frente a una macroinstitución.
» La permanencia de niños, niñas y adolescentes en macroinstituciones en…
On the 22nd October 2013, three Latin American presidents (Costa Rica, Honduras and Paraguay) gave their support to a new regional campaign in the Latin American and Caribbean region launched to end the placement of children under three years of age in institutions. This ‘Call to action’ is led by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the Latin American and Caribbean Chapter of the Global Movement for Children (MMI-CLAC), the Latin American Foster Care Network (RELAF), the …
The lack of care and protection facing children is a global crisis. Every year up to 1.5 billion children are estimated to experience violence; 150 million girls and 73 million boys are raped or subject to sexual violence; more than half of the 215 million child laborers are doing hazardous work. Many children experience sexual, physical and emotional abuse, violence, and neglect in their own homes, and growing numbers fend for themselves on the streets or in child-headed households, or are poorly cared for in large institutions.
This paper looks at the relationship between this lack of…
Many European countries have high rates of young children in institutions, where the physical care of the child predominates, with social/emotional needs a secondary concern. Institutional care is a very poor substitute for positive family care, increasing the risk of development delay, attachment difficulties, neural growth dysfunction and mental health disorders. This article provides an update on a series of projects that have highlighted this issue in Europe, arguing that babies and small children aged less than 3 years old, with or without disability, should not be placed in residential…
The European Declaration on the Health of Children and Young People with Intellectual Disabilities and their Families: Better Heath, Better Lives outlines ten priorities for action aimed at ensuring healthy and full lives for these children and their families. The purpose of this paper is to provide background information and offer pragmatic steps in relation to priority no. 3: “Transfer care from institutions to the community”. The paper was produced in preparation for the conference in Bucharest, Romania 26-27 November, 2010.
The paper includes a statement on the impact of…
20 years on from the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), evidence suggests an alarming lack of progress in achieving children’s fundamental rights to grow up in a loving family environment. Research, particularly from less developed regions, shows a substantial and growing number of children without parental care, with devastating impacts on children’s rights. In recognition of this problem, child rights activists have campaigned for the 20th anniversary to coincide with the agreement of UN guidelines aimed at preventing family separation, and ensuring…
This report focuses on the social protection aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights in southern and eastern Africa. The introduction summarizes the findings of the author’s previous report for FAO on the legal aspects of children’s property and inheritance rights, and it discusses the findings of the current report.
The second section discusses the bi-directional relationship between HIV/AIDS and agriculture, food security, and rural livelihoods (including the relationship between HIV/AIDS and children’s property and inheritance rights). The report also considers the factors…
The vulnerability of children varies as a result of many, interrelated factors, including age, gender, family care, poverty, disability, violence and food security among others. The AIDS epidemic increases children’s vulnerability in many tragic ways. A child’s vulnerability increases as a direct result of his or her own positive HIV status or because of the HIV infection, illness and death of a parent that results in loss of care, nurturing, income and other basic needs. Most often, the direct affects of AIDS create vulnerability both for the child and for the household. In high…
The past six years have seen increasing engagement by the international community on HIV, AIDS and children. One of the eight Millennium Development Goals set by governments in 2000 relates directly to HIV and AIDS. In 2001, at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, governments pledged to protect children affected by the disease. Global commitment to combat the impact of HIV and AIDS on children was again outlined in 2002 in ‘A World Fit for Children’, the outcome document of the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children. More recently, in June 2006, the UN…