Protecting children
Forced into sex work. Recruited into armies. Shut away in institutions. Our job is to ensure vulnerable children are protected, to the best of our ability, wherever they are.
Millions of children are at risk from abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence. We support and protect children who are exploited, caught up in conflicts and emergencies, and help communities protect children in places without child protection services.
The response of governments and others to the risks children face is sometimes almost as damaging as the original problem. Trafficked children are criminalised. Children who have been abandoned and abused are locked up in institutions. Working children are removed from work that is an essential prop to their family’s survival.
Taking a stand
In 2009, we took a stand for children across the world.
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In Pakistan our report on the state of child rights, published in June 2009, exposed profound government failures. “Lack of legislation pushed hundreds of thousands of children into the dark shadows of labour, trafficking, drug abuse, judicial injustice, early marriages and illiteracy,” said our Pakistan Country Director Mohammed Qazilbash. Comic Relief is funding a £3 million project in the province of Sindh to get 20,000 children out of child labour and into school or vocational training.
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In Indonesia, half a million children are living in institutions – most because their parents are too poor to see them educated, not because they're orphans. We’re working closely with the Ministry of Social Affairs to create a major shift in policy and practice in the way children are protected. We’re establishing national standards of care and a regulatory framework for placing children in institutions.
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In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 50,000 children, some as young as six, work as miners. We helped 12,000 leave the mines and get back to school.
- In Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of India, civil unrest and natural disasters have combined to make orphans of up to 100,000 children. In an area with few orphanages and little legal protection, they’re at risk of child labour, trafficking and abuse. With funding from ECHO we helped build 13 model orphanages, set up child-protection committees in 128 villages and 64 pioneering children’s committees, and provided educational, vocational and livelihood support to nearly 2,000 orphans.
See our leaflet, Protect one, protect all.