This report from UNICEF highlights the many dangers, risks, and challenges faced by unaccompanied refugee and migrant children travelling to Europe on their own to escape conflict, poverty, or other forms of oppression.

The Minister of Social Affairs of Cambodia is visiting with officials in Spain and Malta to discuss intercountry adoptions of Cambodian children to those countries, according to this article from the Phnom Penh Post. 

This desk review examines the reasons children are being placed in care, evaluates the types of care in the region, and discusses regional efforts towards deinstitutionalisation.

This document is an article focusing on the experiences of forced migrant youth aged 12 to 17 from Myanmar who have grown up as temporary residents along the northwest border of Thailand.  

This article from Voice of America presents findings from a recent report based on the experiences of police and charities in Bengaluru city in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. The report sheds light on the multi million rupee industry of child trafficking on India’s streets. 

This post is part of the Better Volunteering Better Care Initiative’s month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering. In this post, the author interviews Caroline Scheffer, former Country Director of the The Umbrella Foundation, who shares her thoughts on volunteer and orphanage tourism, and her recommendations for helping ensure the safety and well-being of vulnerable children in developing countries.

In this TED Talk, Tara Winkler, the Managing Director of the Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT), discusses the detrimental impacts that family separation and orphanage placement have on children and speaks out against donating to, or supporting, orphanages in developing countries.

This post is part of the Better Volunteering Better Care Initiative’s month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering. In this post, the author explains that, around the world, many orphanages are being run, not by government, but by church groups and individuals who start as volunteers. “The institutions are poorly regulated and they’re doing a job that could be done by the children’s families, with the right support,” says Smith.

This country care review includes the care-related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

This paper provides an overview of international volunteering, or “voluntourism,” and its potential vulnerability to child sexual exploitation, particularly in residential care centres.