A report by Save the Children examining the role and extent of kinship care in West Central Africa, as well as looking into program and policy implications and gaps in advocacy.

This Kinship Care Album was produced as part of a regional participatory research initiative undertaken by Save the Children to build knowledge on endogenous care practices within families and communities, especially informal kinship care. The Album is a compilation of documentation by children who participated in the research, including resource maps, body maps, photos of focus group discussions and observations by child researchers, pictures and letters from children highlighting their experiences of living in kinship care, their views and recommendations about life in kinship care.

Comprendre et renforcer les mécanismes informels de prise en charge alternative pour améliorer les soins et la protection des enfants, avec un accent sur la prise en charge par la famille elargie en Afrique Centrale et Occidentale. 

PAN has translated its materials into Portuguese, French, and Kiswahili.

This research looked at the factors affecting the family reintegration of girls in the Tshangu district of Kinshasa (DRC), an operational zone of the local NGO OSEPER, a partner of War Child for a 3-year project, seeking to address the needs of street-connected girls, including family reintegration.

Representatives from International Social Service, Save the Children, and SOS Children’s Villages met with the African Committee on Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child during its 21st session on 15 April, 2013 to present on the international Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (UNGA resolution A/RES/64/142) and its new implementation Handbook “Moving Forward.”

Cette déclaration conjointe inter-agences a pour but de (i) de présenter une vision commune des systèmes de protection de l’enfance en Afrique subsaharienne et d’expliquer pourquoi ils sont importants et méritent des investissements et (ii) lancer un appel à l’action auprès des gouvernements, à l’Union africaine, aux communautés économiques régionales, aux institutions multilatérales, aux bailleurs de fonds, au secteur privé, aux institutions académiques, aux organisations de la société civile, aux communautés et aux groupes d’enfants et de jeunes organisés.

Thirteen agencies working in Africa have issued a Joint Statement calling on African governments to strengthen their child protection systems to secure the right of children to a life free from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect in both emergency and non-emergency settings.

Cash transfers to households are becoming an increasingly common policy instrument for reducing poverty in some countries of sub-Saharan Africa. This Briefing Note describes a simple ex-ante ‘microsimulation’ tool to determine whether launching a cash transfer programme will have an affordable impact on poverty.

In this paper, the author argues that the response to the orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa has focused mainly on mobilizing and distributing material resources to households with orphans. Only a few anthropologists have interrogated the frameworks and values on which the projects for orphans are based. The paper provides an analysis of the trends in foster-care research in Africa and the author suggests that current ethnographic data on foster-care practices do not adequately reflect the changing context of fostering in that continent.