This study explores the challenges faced by young people with disabilities in Japan after leaving residential care, finding they often struggle with adapting to new environments, managing their health, and accessing consistent support. It highlights the need for more structured, long-term support systems to help them successfully transition to independent living.

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 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.

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 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.

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?

This article reports on a new collaboration between the Catholic Church in Thailand and UNICEF to address ongoing gaps in child protection systems, particularly those affecting vulnerable and marginalized children in a context of persistent social

This article argues that poverty is a major driver of family separation in Pakistan, forcing many parents to place their children in orphanages or care institutions not out of choice, but as a survival strategy.

This report examines the transition of young people aging out of institutional care into independent adulthood. It highlights how many care leavers face significant challenges after turning 18, including limited access to education, employment, and stable housing, as well as a lack of life skills and supportive social networks.