This article from UNICEF describes how Turkmenistan has initiated the development of its first National Programme on Child Protection and Justice for Children, marking a significant step toward strengthening its systems to safeguard children’s rights and well-being. The article highlights how the programme aims to establish a more coordinated and comprehensive framework for preventing violence, improving access to justice, and ensuring child-friendly services across sectors such as social welfare, education, and law enforcement.

This article examines how, years after the Covid-19 crisis, many children in India who lost one or both parents continue to struggle due to gaps in government support systems.

This article examines South Korea’s decades-long international adoption system as a major human rights scandal, arguing that the country’s past role as a leading “baby exporter” was driven by state policy rather than purely humanitarian motives. It explains how, from the post-Korean War era onward, the government promoted overseas adoption as a cost-saving alternative to building domestic social welfare systems, enabling widespread abuses such as falsified records, coerced or fabricated parental consent, and the misclassification of children as orphans.

This study finds that young people in China experience leaving state care as a gradual, emotionally and materially complex transition shaped by readiness, relationships, and access to housing and income, while staff tend to frame it as a fixed administrative cutoff with limited follow-up support. It highlights systemic gaps—such as fragmented responsibilities, hukou-related transitions, and abrupt loss of support—and calls for more gradual, coordinated, and well-supported pathways to independence.

The article reports that the ongoing US-Israeli war in the Middle East is having a severe and long-lasting impact on children across the region, with hundreds killed and thousands injured and over a million displaced, particularly in Lebanon, Gaza

This paper examines how broader economic and labour market forces influence family separation and the placement of children in residential care in Cambodia, amid ongoing child care deinstitutionalisation reforms. While global evidence highlights the harm caused by residential care and promotes family and community-based alternatives, Cambodia’s reform efforts remain largely reactive and institution-focused, paying limited attention to structural drivers of family separation.

This study assessed the physical health status of children residing in orphanage homes in Lucknow district, India. It found while most had normal nutritional status, many faced challenges, including high school dropout rates, signs of micronutrient deficiencies, and poor oral hygiene.

This Guardian article examines Japan’s landmark legal reform allowing divorced parents to negotiate joint custody for the first time, ending a decades-long system that granted sole custody typically to mothers and often cut off the other parent from a child’s life.

This review examines 43 documents on leaving care in Asia, highlighting limited research and significant gaps in policies and practices supporting care leavers. It finds that while some aftercare support exists, insufficient attention is given to young people’s physical and mental health, underscoring the need for stronger, context-specific policies and research in the region.

Over the past year, the Leadership Dialogue Series, hosted by Miracle Foundation India and India Alternative Care Network (IACN), has brought together leaders from government, civil society, academia, youth, philanthropy, and the private sector to reflect on how systems can better strengthen families and prevent the unnecessary separation of children. As they conclude the 2025-26 series, the 10th edition of Leadership Dialogues will focus on a critical question: How do we know if family strengthening efforts are truly working?