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.
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.
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.
The Chinese government will be conducting its first comprehensive survey on left-behind rural children, says this article from the New York Times.
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 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.
A survey conducted by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation (MoSVY) in 2015 found that 11,788 children were living in 267 residential care institutions in five provinces alone. In 2014, only 139 residential care institutions were known to MoSVY in the same five provinces (housing 7,545 children), indicating a 92% increase in the number of recorded institutions.
In this article, the author discusses "voluntourism", where volunteers travel to other countries for a week or two for a “project” — a temporary medical clinic, an orphanage visit or a school construction. A 2008 study estimated that 1.6 million people volunteer on vacation, spending around $2 billion annually.
This article discusses Tunisia's anti-drug laws that mandate automatic, one-year sentences, which has led to overcrowded prisons and separation of families. The author describes recent encounters with imprisoned women, including some who were imprisoned for smoking marijuana.