The aim of this paper is to explore current understandings of the care and protection needs of separated children as they are presented in the available NGO, multilateral and academic literature. An attempt is made to analyse and augment the findings of this literature through an examination of ethnographic evidence from different parts of the world.
The issues presented in this paper rely in large part on a discussion of childhood in Euro-American communities as compared with the lives of children in non- Western cultures. This lumping together is an oversimplification and is not meant to suggest that all cultures are uniform or to imply that there are not large differences in the experiences of children across all societies. On the contrary, the emphasis on broad, cross-cultural contrasts is meant to highlight the fact that childhood is defined differently in different places and contexts and as a result, children’s experiences of family separation may also be different.
©International Save the Children Alliance
