Better Care Network highlights recent news pieces related to the issue of children's care around the world. These pieces include newspaper articles, interviews, audio or video clips, campaign launches, and more.
Hundreds of Ukraine’s Roma people face an uncertain future in Moldova’s capital Chisinau as many are not documented.
New York, NY, March 7, 2022 — The International Rescue Committee (IRC) warns that of the over 1.5 million refugees that have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the vast majority are women and children at grave risk of violence, exploitation and abuse.
Kaouthar Oudrhiri Nadia was just 16 when she was married off to a violent husband old enough to be her father — an ordeal thousands of Moroccan girls face every year due to a legal loophole. "I went through hell. But the nightmare is behind me now," she said. Nadia, from a remote part of the North African kingdom's Anti-Atlas mountains, managed to win a divorce after a year of marriage.
UNICEF estimates that 7.5 million children in Ukraine are in danger from the conflict and require urgent assistance. Shelling has hit hospitals, restricted the work of emergency services and is creating a major wave of trauma among the young. Half a million children have fled out of Ukraine with their families.
As the Russian Army bears down on Ukraine from the north, south and east, a mass migration of millions of civilians is gathering like a storm over the plains. But the international border gates are a painful filter, splitting families apart. The Ukrainian government has mandated that men aged 18 to 60 are not allowed to leave the country, so the crowds pouring into Poland, Hungary and other neighboring nations are eerily devoid of men.
Children who are too sick to go home or flee the capital shelter from Russian missiles in a Kyiv hospital.
Evacuation trains from Ukraine to Poland have become lifelines for women and children forced to evacuate the most hard-hit centres of Ukraine.
“Care” or “foster care” is often depicted as a system that protects children from parents who hurt them. The truth, however, is that the state often removes children from loving families simply because they are poor. Ironically, a system meant to protect children ends up causing them immeasurable harm.
What has war looked like for the children of Ukraine? For many, it has meant sheltering in basements and subway stations while Russian forces attack cities and street fights rage. For others, it has meant a scramble to escape, leaving homes and fathers, taking trains and buses or walking for miles with their families in hopes of crossing into a safer country.
Nothing crystallizes the “her body, my baby” conundrum of surrogacy quite like a war. Should a surrogate be tucked away somewhere safe, to protect the child she’s growing for someone else? Or should she be with her own family, or in her hometown, or even out on the streets defending her nation? That is a live question in Ukraine right now.