La Convention de La Haye du 29 mai 1993 sur la protection des enfants et la coopération en matière d'adoption internationale protège les enfants et leurs familles des risques d’adoptions à l’étranger illégales, irrégulières, prématurées ou mal préparées. Cette Convention qui fonctionne également par l’intermédiaire d’un système d’Autorités centrales nationales, renforce la Convention des Nations Unies relative aux droits de l'enfant (art. 21). 

Depuis des siècles, la situation des « orphelins » et des enfants abandonnés a généré non seulement des préoccupations, mais aussi des réponses concrètes de divers types. Ces réactions ont suscité des remises en question assez fondamentales, notamment pour ce qui est des placements en institution et, plus récemment, des justifications admissibles pour que la séparation des enfants d’avec leurs parents soit avalisée, voire imposée, par les autorités. 

Cette note d'orientation de Save the Children présente le contexte, les objectifs et les principes directeurs énoncés dans les lignes directrices pour la protection de remplacement des enfants. Elle explique également pourquoi la prise en charge familiale est le mode de protection de remplacement à preferer aux placement en institutions.

The current study employed interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore 18 in-depth, qualitative interviews from six participants on the meaning and experience of motherhood among teenage mothers in the United States in foster care in the and in the years immediately after ageing out. 

This is a recording of a Webinar conducted by Christian Alliance for Orphans on "Replicable Models for Transition to Family-Based Care." 

The organizations profiled in these case studies have pioneered effective transitions from residential to family-based care. 

This short white paper by CAFO seeks to help readers accurately understand and carefully present orphan-related statistics.

This report gives an overview of implemented activities in the process of deinstitutionalization, identifying the main obstacles, effects, and achieved results. The overall objective of the report is to achieve greater understanding of the progress and shortcomings of the process of deinstitutionalization and transformation of social protection in Serbia, and to analyze relevant policies that will provide input for the creation of new measures for further support of the reform process of social protection in Serbia.

Adoptive families are now using the Internet to give their unwanted adopted children over to complete strangers, some of whom are traffickers, pedophiles, child pornographers, or worse. This practice is known as private rehoming.

This country brief provides an overview of data on children’s living arrangements in Jordan, extracted from the 2012 DHS survey. 

This report describes the situation and experience of families during the economic crisis and examines how family-focused policies have changed since 2010 in the European Union. In some countries, benefits have been reduced, affecting disadvantaged families disproportionately.

This paper examines the work Open Society Foundations have done in Croatia as part of its Mental Health Initiative (MHI), with the goal of helping people with disabilities return to their communities where they are supported by family and friends.

The main purpose of this final, summative evaluation is to evaluate the final results and achievements of the "Developing community based services for children with disabilities and their families’’ project in relation to the project log frame and theory of change.

Global policy makers are advocating that institution-living orphans and abandoned children (OAC) be moved as quickly as possible to a residential family setting and that institutional care be used as a last resort.

This study aims to determine the prevalence of maltreatment experienced by institutionalized children prior to their admission to Charitable Children's Institutions (orphanages) in western Kenya, and to describe their socio-demographic characteristics, reasons for admission, and the factors assoc

In order to investigate orphans' situation and development in Iraqi Kurdistan, samples from the two available orphan care systems, the traditional foster care and the modem orphanages, are examined at an index test and at 1-year follow-up regarding competency scores and behavioral probl

This report provides baseline information on conditions in orphanages in the Russian Federation. This information addresses three major limitations in the literature on the development of children residing in substandard orphanages and those adopted from such environments.

Drawing on existing peer-reviewed and grey literature, this article provides an overview of the major components of care reform in Ghana, including reintegration with the extended family, foster care and adoption. In addition, the article discusses the prospects and challenges involved in achieving the reform's intended component.

This chapter first traces the etymology of the definition of “orphan” and its attendant “crises.” Then, using examples from Guatemala and Uganda, the authors consider how the idea of an “orphan crisis” has traveled from development to charitable responses and what effects this has on local child protection systems.

Using a practice approach focused on interactions between foreign volunteers and local staff, this study examined the impact of volunteer tourism on Zion Primary School and Tamale Children’s Home (an orphanage), both in Tamale, Ghana.

Across China, children and young people with disabilities confront discrimination in schools.

This report by Human Rights Watch is based on field research conducted in Bacău, Bucharest, Constanţa, Giurgiu, and Ilfov counties in February 2006, and follow-up telephone and email contacts through June 2006.

Russia is home to one of the fastest-growing AIDS epidemics in the world, but the government has done little to address the problem. A growing number of HIV-positive pregnant women and new mothers must make a very difficult choice: whether or not to keep their children.

For street children in Hanoi, Vietnam is falling far short of its obligations under Vietnamese and international law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Between 2003 and 2006, Human Rights Watch received credible reports of serious abuses of street children in Hanoi.

This report details the conditions of children held at an unofficial detention center in Kigali, Rwanda, held in overcrowded buildings and suffering from a lack of adequate food, water, and medical care, and subjected to abuse. 

Ce résumé sur les recherches est offert aux églises, aux organisations confessionnelles et aux personnes de foi qui cherchent des informations factuelles sur les meilleures façons de venir en aide aux orphelins et aux enfants privés de la protection parentale.

El presente resumen de investigaciones se ofrece a iglesias, organizaciones religiosas y personas de fe que buscan información basada en pruebas sobre la mejor manera de cuidar a huérfanos y niños separados del cuidado parental.

This study was carried out in rural Arkansas to examine the feasibility and usefulness of a universal screening tool--the Family Map Inventory (FMI)--to assess family strengths and needs in a home visiting program.

Shortly after Nicolar Ceauscu was overthrown on December 22, 1989, the world was exposed for the first time to the shocking images of Romania's orphans, especially its children with disabilities and babies with AIDS.

This report is based on 11 weeks of field research in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau between November 2009 and February 2010.

In March 2013, a fire erupted in the Dakar neighborhood of Medina and a Quranic boarding school, housed in a makeshift shack caught on fire. Eight young boys at the school were burned to death, but the guardian was absent because the house was unsanitary and uninhabitable.

While many migrants and asylum-seeking children may try to reach Australia, they often spend months or years caught in Indonesia.

The Canary Islands were in the spotlight of international media attention in 2006 when more than 30,000 migrants arrived in rickety boats from West Africa. Among them were 928 children who arrived without a parent or care-giver.

This report is based on interviews with more than fifty street children in the Democratic Republic of Congo––children who might not necessarily be without families, but who live without meaningful protection, supervision, or direction from responsible adults.

This study used a secondary analysis of data from 2003 to 2013 to better understand the situation of children temporarily abandoned in Romania. It looked at data for children aged 0-3 years who were abandoned in different hospital units or institutionalized in public orphanages or public and private foster care institutions. 

Children who have experienced early adversity have been known to be at risk of developing cognitive, attachment, and mental health problems; therefore, it is crucial that children entering foster care can be properly assessed as early as possible.

The negative impact of childhood maltreatment, which can often extend well into adulthood, consistently appears to be ameliorated if victimized children possess several resiliencies or strengths.

The present study aimed to identify the proportion of children who are orphans and their geographic distribution in Nepal.

Eurochild contributed to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' report “Towards a better investment in the rights of the child” with a joint submission with Hope & Homes for Children and SOS Children’s Villages International.

This TedX presentation features Greta Munns, a youth empowerment advocate who was placed in foster care at age fifteen. Her “story” is what prompted her exploration of the foster care system.

This manual, produced by Save the Children in Sri Lanka, provides guidance on Family Group Conferencing (FGC), which was introduced to the governmental childcare structure in Sri Lanka's Southern Providnce between 2006-2008. The key objectives of this training manual are to pr

This is a retrospective exploratory study looking at 73 family group decision-making conferences for chidlren referred to institutional public services in Kenya. The purpose was to explore the conference outcomes on the child's safety, permanency and wellbeing.

This project aimed to bring together the available information on the number of disabled people living in residential institutions in 28 European countries, and to identify successful strategies for replacing institutions with community-based services, paying particular attention to economic issues in the transition. It is the largest study of its kind. This project was funded in order to identify as a priority the practical considerations of how to support states making the transition to community-based services, including managing the costs of doing so.