Missing : Children without parental care in international development policy

Children need shelter, food and water to survive, and an education and access to health care to give them a chance for the future. But, crucially, they also need love, care and security to develop into healthy adults able to contribute to society.

In this report we argue that governments’ and international donors’ failure to keep children in loving families, out of residential institutions and off the streets, will be another barrier to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and condemns a generation of children to a life of abuse and neglect without the support and protection of parents.

Children without the love and care of a parent are amongst the most vulnerable in the world. Without adult protection children are more likely to die at an early age, are at greater risk of malnutrition, violence and exploitation and more likely to miss out on school. Despite this, preventing the loss of parental care is disgracefully absent from international development and aid policies. There are no complete global statistics on children without parental care. Whilst there are some global estimates for the numbers of children in institutions, trafficked, orphaned and living in detention, there are no reliable statistics for children living on the street. If we don’t know who and where these children are, we cannot hope to provide adequate services to meet their needs.

Pulling together what is available, we calculate that, at the very least, there are 24 million children living without parental care, or 1% of the world’s child population. In poor regions, where more detailed statistics are available, the situation appears dire. For example, in some Southern African countries up to 34% of children live with neither parent.

There is an urgent need to take action on children without parental care. There is also an opportunity to build on growing momentum around this issue, as demonstrated by the welcoming by consensus of the Guidelines on the Alternative Care of Children, by the UN General Assembly on the 20th November 2009. We call on governments and international donors to recognise the right of every child to grow up in a loving family environment, and to mainstream child protection issues and children left without parental care in their interventions on global poverty reduction.

Lastly, we hope that children without parental care themselves will take courage from this report, knowing that there are adults who care, who are willing to listen to them and will make sure their voices are heard.