Kinship Care Album: Regional

This Regional Kinship Care Album is a compilation of the 3 country albums (Kenya, Ethiopia and Zanzibar) bringing together information from children, young people and adults collected during the Kinship Care Research that took place in each of the three countries from late 2013 through 2014. The research was undertaken to improve the knowledge and understanding of Kinship Care as an endogenous practice so as to inform future programme and advocacy interventions on care reform, and in particular, to know how best to strengthen community based alternatives such as this.

As it is stated in each of the individual country albums, Child Participation is an integral component of Save the Children’s way of working with the core purpose being to empower the children and give them the opportunity to influence actions and decisions that affect their lives. The Research provided an opportunity for children and caregivers living in kinship care to express themselves and give first-hand information on their experiences – both negative and positive; analyse the trends and common factors that would strengthen or weaken the quality of care that children receive; and contribute towards making concrete recommendations on how Kinship Care can be strengthened.

Kinship Care Album: Zanzibar

This album is a compilation of information collected from children and young people during the Kinship Care research in Zanzibar by Save the Children, in partnership with the Ministry of Empowerment, Social Welfare, Youth, Women and Children and SOS Children’s Villages Zanzibar, between March and September 2014.

Children actively and directly participated as researchers and advocates and were involved in analysis, documentation and action planning on the lives of children living in kinship care — the positive and negative aspects of living with kin caregivers and the factors and practices that strengthen or undermine children’s care, protection and participation within families and communities.

Kinship Care Album: Ethiopia

Kinship care in Ethiopia is embedded within the socio-cultural and economic context of the Ethiopian family system as alternative child care option, where by relatives assume greater responsibility for the provision of psychosocial and economic care of children who are orphans or those unable to live with their parents as a result of several factors. The kinship bond in Ethiopia includes family members related with the orphan children either by blood, marriage, clan, friendship, and or other deliberately created social ties.

This album presents viewpoints of children and young people, who have been engaged in this participatory research on kinship care – as advisors, researchers, respondents and documenters during the months of June to December, 2014. It presents the positive and negative experiences of children and care providers in kinship alternative care arrangement as told by children.

In this album the child researchers and those informant children to the kinship care research express their own understanding of and/or experiences in kinship care arrangement using different mechanisms such as drawings, poems, storytelling, and moments captures going around in their own communities. It incorporates views of girls and boys, including those living in kinship care arrangement and those children living with their biological parents who are caring for kin child within the family. The album also presents some of the key recommendations expressed by children in their vision tree.

Live, Learn & Play Safe

Unaccompanied and separated children (UASC) are vulnerable to many threats and face particular protection challenges and an uncertain future. This publication looks at the lives of UASC in Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. It examines the particular and unique challenges facing UASC in each respective country.

The UNHCR recognizes the regional dimension of the protection risks for UASC and has therefore enacted a regional initiative to combine both regional and country-specific specifications. It complements existing regional initiatives designed to address smuggling and trafficking.

The regional initiative seeks to achieve the following:

Children are better protected against the risks associated with secondary movement, trafficking and smuggling
Children benefit from appropriate alternative care arrangements
Children have access to tracing services and can be reunited with their families
Children have access to developmental and livelihoods opportunities
Child protection systems are strengthened to address the challenges faced by children in a holistic way
Better outcomes for children through more effective regional coordination and cooperation

Understanding and improving informal alternative care mechanisms

Building upon a Save the Children regional participatory research initiative on kinship care that was undertaken in West Central Africa in 2012 – 2013, Save the Children’s East Africa Regional Office supported a similar process in East Africa, which resulted in this research report. The aim of the research in East Africa was to build knowledge on endogenous care practices within families and communities, especially informal kinship care, in order to increase the care and protection of children. The research on kinship care was implemented in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zanzibar.

The research findings revealed that existing laws, policies and guidelines – particularly in Zanzibar and Kenya – do not have sufficient focus on informal kinship care practices which contributes to the lack of support provided to kinship care families. The findings also demonstrate that girls and boys experiences of kinship care are diverse and that outcomes for children are mixed.

One of the key debates that emerged were the risks attached to formalising kinship care. While formalisation of kinship care may increase monitoring and regulation preventing discrimination and mistreatment, and increasing caregivers and children’s access to services, it is also recognised that formalisation may adversely harm this traditional informal form of care, as some relatives may be more reluctant to care for relatives.

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child

A socio-legal perspective

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child is Africa’s pre-eminent document on children’s rights. In this book, Thoko Kaime appropriately locates the Charter at the centre of debates on the promotion and protection of children’s rights. He critically examines the role of law in society as he undertakes a socio-legal examination of the Charter. His analysis of the international mechanisms alongside local cultural processes and observations challenges orthodox views on how best to achieve the realisation of children’s rights within African communities. Raising the cultural legitimacy of children’s rights will require a combination of international, national and local strategies. This book makes the case for such an approach and provides a useful framework for conducting this work.

Monitoring Child Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa

Achievements and Challenges

This study evaluates qualitatively the government’s programming and budgeting for children rights to basic nutrition, health services, social services and education thus far, measured against the legal obligations to realise these rights as set out in the constitution. It additionally provides valuable data disaggregating resources expended on children as a proportion of the overall budget. Further concerns are popular participation in realising children’s rights, children’s own perceptions of government efforts, and the legal instruments to enforce children’s unqualified constitutional socio-economic rights.

The Rights of the Child in a Changing World

25 Years After The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

This book deals with the implementation of the rights of the child as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 21 countries from Europe, Asia, Australia, and the USA. It gives an overview of the legal status of children regarding their most salient rights, such as the implementation of the best interest principle, the right of the child to know about of his/her origin, the right to be heard, to give medical consent, the right of the child in the field of employment, religious education of children, prohibition of physical punishment, protection of the child through deprivation of parental rights and in the case of inter-country adoption.

In the last 25 years since the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted, many States Parties to the Convention have made great efforts to pass legislation regulating the rights of the child, in their commitment to the improvement of the legal status of the child. However, is that enough for any child to live better, safer, and healthier? What are the practical effects of this international as well as many national instruments in the everyday life of children? Have there been any outcomes in terms of improvement of their status around the world, and improvement of the conditions under which they live, since the Convention entered into force? In tackling these questions, this work presents a comparative overview of the implementation of the Convention, and evaluates the results achieved.

Children’s Rights Law in the Global Human Rights Landscape

Isolation, Inspiration, Integration?

Children’s rights law is often studied and perceived in isolation from the broader field of human rights law. This volume explores the inter-relationship between children’s rights law and more general human rights law in order to see whether elements from each could successfully inform the other. Children’s rights law has a number of distinctive characteristics, such as the emphasis on the ‘best interests of the child’, the use of general principles, and the inclusion of ‘third parties’ (e.g. parents and other care-takers) in treaty provisions. The first part of this book questions whether these features could be a source of inspiration for general human rights law. In part two, the reverse question is asked: could children’s rights law draw inspiration from developments in other branches of human rights law that focus on other specific categories of rights holders, such as women, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, or older persons? Finally, the interaction between children’s rights law and human rights law – and the potential for their isolation, inspiration or integration – may be coloured or determined by the thematic issue under consideration. Therefore the third part of the book studies the interplay between children’s rights law and human rights law in the context of specific topics: intra-family relations, LGBTQI marginalization, migration, media, the environment and transnational human rights obligations.

Children’s Rights in Intercountry Adoption

A European Perspective

European jurisdictions play a central role in intercountry adoption, both as countries of origin for children being placed, and as receiving countries. In 2010, 50 per cent of all children involved in intercountry adoption worldwide were sent to countries within Europe, while three European states – France, Spain and Italy – have been in the top five receiving states in the world for the past 15 years. In addition, of the approximately 30,000 children involved in intercountry adoption per year worldwide, around one-third come from European jurisdictions.

The question that this book aims to answer is very simple: how can we best protect the rights of these children?

Using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption as the foundation for analysis, this book provides an examination of the application of children’s rights in the field of intercountry adoption. It uses European jurisdictions as examples of both good and bad practice in order to illustrate the issues that arise in the practical implementation of these principles. In doing so, the book proposes normative guidelines within which intercountry adoption can be effected in a manner that protects the rights of children in Europe.

This book argues that children involved in intercountry adoption should be afforded the same safeguards, the same protection, as children in domestic placements, in a system that focuses on the welfare of the child as the paramount consideration.

The book covers in detail the following issues:
-the place of intercountry adoption within the domestic system
-the applicability of intercountry adoption as a child protection mechanism, and the impact it can have on other forms of alternative care
-the conditions for parental consent to intercountry adoption; including the identity of those who must give consent, and how it can be dispensed with
-the mechanisms used to prevent consent being obtained improperly, and to prevent the illegal trafficking of children
-the participation of the adopted child in the decision-making process
-the right of the child to obtain information concerning his or her biological parents
-the eligibility of prospective adopters
-the support necessary for a successful adoptive placement