Tag Archives: children

Age

China News | Children

Abducted or abandoned children in China see greater adoption opportunity under new rules
  • Authorities have capped the search for abandoned and trafficked children’s biological families at a year, allowing for them to be adopted from orphanages after that period.
  • Previously, children were left in indefinite limbo as long as their cases were active with search authorities.
  • More than 13,000 children were abducted last year alone according to the government, with the U.S. State Department estimating as many as 20,000 a year falling prey to traffickers and other kidnappers.

Read the full story at Reuters.

Age, Race + Color + Ethnicity

South Africa Feature | Black Children

Playing with Blackness

Image Credit: Leonardo Angelucci/AFP/Getty Images, via The Guardian
Image Credit: Leonardo Angelucci/AFP/Getty Images, via The Guardian

Childish Trading and Manufacturing founder Maite Makgoba hopes her Mommpy Mpoppy doll will help change the way young black South African children look at themselves. In a market overwhelmed by whiteness, her dolls feature dark skin and natural-looking hair, giving black children an opportunity to insert images of themselves into their play fantasies. The Guardian takes a look at the toy and the uphill market challenges Makgoba faces.

Read the full feature at the Guardian.

Age, Health + Ability

South Africa News & Research | Children with Disabilities

Human Rights Watch: 500,000+ South African children with disabilities reportedly excluded from schooling
  • According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, parents of children with disabilities report facing exclusion from mainstream schooling and long waiting lists for admission to special schools.
  • Families with children who did manage to make it into schools reported facing neglect and higher student fees.
  • The government criticized the report as “sensational,” stating that it failed to acknowledge ongoing efforts towards inclusive education after becoming one of the first to ratify the 2007 U.N. Disability Rights Treaty.

“The job is not done until all children count just the same in the education system.”

Read the full story at the BBC.

(Image Credit: Human Rights Watch, via BBC)

Age, Health + Ability

Nicaragua Feature | Special-Needs Youth

Video

Empowerment, One Step at a Time

Nicaraguan families with children with special needs including autism and physical disabilities have discovered in psicoballet (“psychoballet”) an empowering form of therapy focused on developing children’s confidence and physical and emotional control. TeleSUR explores the impact of the therapeutic model that has migrated to Nicaragua since its inception in Cuba in the 1970s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV8ATa2B7RM

Watch the teleSUR feature on YouTube (in Spanish).

Age

Pakistan News | Children

At least 12 men arrested in widespread child abuse scandal in Pakistan
  • The men are accused of sexually abusing 280 children and blackmailing their families.
  • Charges detail how the abuse was captured on film, which was then used to extort money from parents.
  • Families accuse the police of failing to act on information they had received, with some alleging a cover up.

Watch the Euronews report on YouTube.

Age, Gender, Nationality + Migration

U.S. News | Immigrant Women & Children

U.S. federal judge rules mothers and children held in immigration detention centers must be released
  • The judge cited poor detention conditions and failure to comply with a 1997 ruling on the detention of migrant children as grounds for release.
  • Border officials resorted to the detention centers during the surge of undocumented migrant arrivals in 2014, many of whom were unaccompanied children.
  • The Department of Homeland Security will have to develop a release strategy by August 3, according to the ruling.

“It is astonishing that Defendants have enacted a policy requiring such expensive infrastructure without more evidence to show that it would be compliant with an Agreement that has been in effect for nearly 20 years. … It is even more shocking that after nearly two decades Defendants have not implemented appropriate regulations to deal with this complicated area of immigration law.”

Read the full story at BuzzFeed News.

Age, Nationality + Migration

U.S. News | Child Immigrants

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Audit finds U.S. border patrol violated rules in vast majority of deportations of children over five-year period
  • The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that from 2009 to 2014, 93% of unaccompanied Mexican and Canadian children under 14 were deported without documentation of the safety assurance process.
  • Unaccompanied Mexican and Canadian children undergo interviews with border patrol authorities to determine if they have been or will be trafficked, persecuted, or otherwise endangered in their home country.
  • Immigration lawyers and rights monitors have questioned the effectiveness and legality of having border patrol oversee the interviews, arguing their officers are not the appropriate figures to make such determinations.

“CBP just does not have the training, the understanding of humanitarian protection, to make the assessment of these children from Mexico before sending them back to their home countries.”

Read the full story at the Guardian.

(Image Credit: John Moore/Getty Images, via the Guardian)