The Global Protection Cluster (GPC) is issuing this Protection Alert in light of the escalating crisis and immediate protection risks to civilians in North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Based on distressing reports from protection partners and the DRC Protection Cluster, this alert seeks to draw attention to the worsening humanitarian situation and mobilize urgent action to protect civilians in the affected areas.

The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC/the Committee), in collaboration with African Union Member States, partner organizations, children and young people, launches the first of its kind Continental Study on Children Without Parental Care (CWPC) in Africa. The study, conducted from 2020 to 2022, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, covered over 43 countries in the five regions of Africa.

This article examines how language, liminality, and social marginalization converge in the institutional lives of two displaced children in Angola. A displaced child is very likely to be placed into institutionalized care, which in Angola exists in the form of centros de acolhimento, residential centers that house minors affected by orphanhood, poverty, displacement, or abandonment. Drawing on one year of ethnographic research in two residential centers, the article argues that despite being sites of care and protection, some children come to desire living on the street as a byproduct of persistent marginalization and forms of liminality in the institutions.

This brochure from UNICEF provides an overview of child marriage in the Sahel, a region spanning the northern portion of sub-Saharan Africa.

This report explores children and young people’s views and experiences related to COVID-19 and its indirect impacts. Firstly, it looks at children and young people’s perceptions of how COVID-19 has had an impact on their lives and countries.

Using a phenomenological research design, this study delves into the motivations and challenging experience of foster carers in South-Kivu.

The goal of this paper was to conduct a review of studies from 2008 to 2019 that evaluated community‐based caregiver or family interventions to support the mental health of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in sub‐Saharan Africa, across four domains: (a) study methodology, (b) cultural adaptation and community participation, (c) intervention strategies, and (d) effects on child mental health.

This study of distributed parenting and new ideas about what it means to raise a child properly is informed by over three decades of research among the Bamiléké.

This brief from Save the Children describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted children's education in West and Central Africa and outlines recommendations for responding to the growing vulnerabilities of children in the region.

This brief - a supplement to the Stop the War on Children 2020: Gender matters report - highlights the situation of children in conflict zones in West and Central Africa with a focus on gender.