When Mugalu* was adopted, his birth family says they were told they would still be able to speak to him regularly and he would come back for visits. “They said we would be one big happy family,” says his mother, Sylvia, wiping away tears. But Sylvia, 40, has not seen her son since he was adopted from Uganda almost seven years ago by an American couple. She is now fighting to get her son back, taking her case to the high court in Uganda and exploring her legal options in the US.

This briefing paper sets out how children in Uganda are being affected, and practical recommendations to the Government, donors and other key stakeholders.

"Children who were fostered by the Social Welfare Office in 1997 and were allegedly given to an orphanage, were reunited with their biological mother at an emotional ceremony on Monday in Mchinji," according to this article.

This first webinar of a series focused on late-breaking research calling attention to the realities of vulnerable children in Uganda will focus on street-connected children as a particularly vulnerable demographic in Uganda.

Child's i Foundation in Uganda has donated bicycles, smartphones, face masks and bottles of sanitizer to volunteers in Makindye division, Kampala to support them in their work to "sensitize residents about the spread of COVID-19" and so that the volunteers can "reach places that are inaccessible" and give timely reports on the needs of the community, particularly vulnerable children and families, according to this article from the Daily Monitor.

With a recent interest by stakeholders in Ghana to consider kinship care as an alternative care option in child welfare policy, this study explores current kinship care challenges to help identify and address potential setbacks for policy and practice recommendations.

This Africa Regional COVID-19 Situation Report outlines how how World Vision has reached over 18.2 million so far (including 6.9 million children) with their response interventions covering 26 countries on the continent. 

This article from the Thomson Reuters Foundation reports on the increase of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia as a result of the lockdowns enacted to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

This article from BBC News describes the movement of children and young people in Nigeria from Koranic schools back to their homes during the COVID-19 crisis, "one of the biggest ever state organised mass movements of minors in Africa's most-populous state."

In this episode of the Protected! Podcast, Elsa Laurin, the Senior Child Protection Officer for the East and Horn of Africa from UNHCR, tells Hani Mansourian how they and their partner organisations re-prioritised child protection cases in response to the changing situation of shut borders in eastern Africa as the threat of an outbreak of COVID-19 loomed.