More children face family separation

Picture: An unhopeful child

Global recession and armed conflict will cause a big increase in the number of children in orphanages and on the street over the next decade, warns an international children’s charity. These children, separated from their families, are more likely to suffer abuse, be exposed to HIV infection, experience mental health problems and later abandon their own children.
Children’s charity EveryChild issued the warning through a briefing paper, Why do separated children matter?, which explores child separation as a global development issue. No accurate figures exist for the total number of separated children world-wide but the charity estimates between 100 and 150 million children already live or work on the streets, 8 million live in residential institutions and over 1 million are in detention. It predicts a jump in the number of ‘invisible’ children caused by global recession, military conflicts such as in the Congo, failure to tackle violence and abuse against children, and increasing reliance on institutional care in poor countries.
“With current trends like the global recession set to signifi cantly increase the number of children separated from their families and communities,” said Anna Feuchtwang of EveryChild, “policy makers must do more to address the underlying causes of separation such as family disintegration due to violence, abuse and exploitation.”