Niger

Over a week ago, an unaccompanied eight year-old boy was placed on a plane to Paris from Comoros, an island nation off the coast of southeastern Africa, and was detained at the airport in Paris for more than a week when officials discovered he had false travel documents, according to this article from the Guardian. 

In a joint open letter to the Inter-Agency Expert Group on the SDGs, children’s NGOs and leading disability-rights organizations, have appealed to the UN to ensure that “children living outside of households and/or without parental care” are included in the SDGs monitoring framework.

Research from the Howard League for Penal Reform suggests that children in care in the UK are more likely to be criminalized, and to come into contact with the criminal justice system, particularly children in residential care homes, according to this article from the Guardian.

The Chinese government will be conducting its first comprehensive survey on left-behind rural children, says this article from the New York Times.

This article highlights the findings of a recent report on residential child care centers in Cambodia, published by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation (MoSVY) and UNICEF Cambodia, and discusses current programs and campaigns underway to enhance child protection and children’s rights in the country.

Hope for Children will host a press conference on 29 March 2016 at 11am regarding its establishment of a second children's shelter for unaccompanied minors. The event will take place at the Hilton Park Hotel in Cyprus.

This study examined (1) how perceived social support (PSS) varied across orphan‐related characteristics (e.g., orphan status, such as single, maternal or paternal, and their living environments, such as in child‐headed households, on the street, in an orphanage or in a foster home) and (2) the relative importance of sources of PSS (relatives/community/adults and peers) and functional social support (emotional/informational/instrumental and social) and its association with emotional well‐being and mental distress.

The Childline Foundation, along with three universities, will be conducting a mapping exercise of all child care institutions in Kerala, India, according to this article from NYOOOZ.

This article describes recent research on children in institutions in Cambodia. 

PEPFAR recently announced the launch of a DREAMS Innovation Challenge. The DREAMS Partnership has committed $85 million for innovative solutions that further DREAMS’ commitment to reduce new HIV infections by 40 percent among adolescent girls and young women in 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2017. Through the Challenge, DREAMS is seeking to award and implement solutions that further DREAMS' commitment to reduce HIV infections by infusing new thinking and high-impact approaches to meet the urgent, complex needs of adolescent girls and young women in the 10 DREAMS countries – Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.