OVERVIEW

The Central Authority for Inter-Country Adoptions of Cambodia has begun to enter into agreements with several countries to resume inter-country adoptions, after a four-year suspension due to child trafficking concerns, according to the article.

Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence Against Children, Maria Santos Pais, met with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Commission on the Rights of Women and Children in Jakarta, Indonesia. The meeting included updates from the ASEAN Commissioners on efforts and reforms in the region to ensure children’s protection from violence.

Some private schools in Australia are taking students on volunteer trips to orphanages in Asia. But “what do these trips mean for the children in orphanages?,” this article asks.

Orphanage tourism is on the rise in Myanmar and in other countries in the region such as Cambodia and Thailand, according to the article.

This article from the BBC follows up on two recent “baby scandals” that emerged in Thailand last year.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in the Philippines has issued a statement that it will continue to advocate for legal adoptions in the country.

This country care review includes the care related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. 

This article analyses on the phenomenon of orphanage tourism/ childcare tourism in Cambodia and its social and economic impacts by interviewing the managers directors or volunteer coordinators of nine residential care facilities and to develop recommendations and guidelines for the residential care centres and volunteer organisations to improve the volunteering practice in the future.

Muhammadiyah, a member of Family for Every Child, has launched a new alliance with fellow Indonesian NGOs, to encourage the use of family-based alternative care for children and promote the use of institutional care only as a last result for children in Indonesia.