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In the United Kingdom, there has been an explicit move towards greater emphasis on providing family support when there is concern about a child's welfare. Child welfare organisations in Australia have also recognised the need to refocus services to vulnerable children and families. This changed agenda is based on the idea that reduction in the incidence of factors that can lead to child and family dysfunction requires a coherent system that can meet the diverse needs of families (and their children) as early as possible. The overarching framework for such a strategy adopts holistic,…
Many developing countries are hard hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly in Africa. India and other Asian countries are also being affected. In some areas, as many as one in every 3 women of childbearing age are infected with HIV and will succumb to AIDS, probably before their children reach adulthood. The US Census Bureau has estimated that 15.6 million children had lost their mother or both parents to AIDS by the end of 2000. More than 90% of these children are from sub-Saharan Africa.
Because so many young people are dying, the social framework that has been used for…
Children and adolescents are not short adults - they are qualitatively different. They have physical, psychological and social needs that must be met to enable healthy growth and development. The extent to which parents, the family, the community and the society are able to meet these developmental needs (or not) has long-term consequences for the kinds of adults they will become. Armed conflict, displacement, disruption of normal life, and separation from family and/or community can have powerful, long-lasting effects that need to be compensated for in protection and assistance interventions…
In today's humanitarian crises, civilians face ever more attacks and targeting by perpetrators of violence. And amongst these civilians — largely women and children — youth seem to have been forgotten in humanitarian priorities. Caught somewhere between their young childhood and full adulthood, youth struggle with their own identity as they watch the social fabric collapse around them: homes are destroyed, communities are divided by violence, and their own hopes for a better future are crushed.
Years of experience have shown that youth tend to fall between the cracks during emergencies:…
In armed conflicts, women can be deprived of their liberty for reasons that are either directly related to the conflict or that have nothing to do with it; they can be held in custody for ordinary crimes unrelated to the hostilities, whether committed prior to or during the armed conflict. But the issues raised by the detention of women rarely feature in public discourse or articles on women and war. Media images of detainees usually portray men languishing behind bars or barbed wire. Yet the ICRC visits and has registered several thousand women (and girls) detained in relation to armed…
Children today are increasingly deliberate targets, as well as unintended victims, in armed conflicts around the world. Between 1985 and 1995:
- 2 million children were killed;
- 6 million were left seriously injured or permanently disabled;
- 12 million were left homeless;
- 1 million were orphaned or separated from their parents;
- 10 million suffered from serious psycho-logical trauma as a result of war; and
- 300,000 served as child soldiers.
The twenty-first century presents a hostile face to many millions of children in many African countries. An increasing number of children are being forced to the streets as result of poverty, abuse, torture, rape abandonment or orphaned by AIDS. Human rights violations against children in the 1990s have become a common and disturbing occurrence in many African countries. Denial of basic human and legal rights including the right to life, liberty and security as a person to children are now a defining feature of the African socio-economic landscape.
This paper examines Africa's…
The SOS Social Centers is a SOS Children’s Villages project that seeks to protect children at risk due to poverty. The Centers work in areas peripheral to the Bolivian cities of Cochabamba, Tarija, Oruro, Santa Cruz and Sucre. SOS Social Centers offer protection and education for the children of families without the necessary finances to support them. The children are attended to during the day and have access to health, nutritional and education services. The center also promotes the inclusion of women and the families of the children attended to at the centers in daily activities.
This…
This paper is the final product of a three-year research project looking into when the option of giving people money instead of, or as well as, in-kind assistance is feasible and appropriate. The report argues that cash-based responses should play a growing role in humanitarian response to crises. Recognizing the impact emergencies can have on family stability, we include it in this listserv to contribute to understanding of how families and communities can be strengthened in emergency contexts.
The focus of this pack is on homeless street children. It describes the way in which some agencies have identified children who are at highest risk of street living, and outlines some intervention strategies for dealing with these children.
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