In commemoration of the 2021 World Children’s Day (WCD), the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has urged governments at all levels, to adopt and enforce the rights of the child in all the 36 states of the federation.

Executive Secretary of the Commission, Tony Ojukwu who made the call in Abuja while marking this year’s WCD, noted that children deserve special attention and protection in order for them to fruitfully pass through the various stages of survival and development.

He said, “ it has become imperative for states who are yet to adopt the Child’s Rights Law to do so to avoid further violations of the rights of these vulnerable children”.

The Chief Human Rights Officer in Nigeria observed that “ the issue of out-of-school children, child labour, poor antenatal and postnatal care, child wandering, child abandonment, child denial of necessaries, Almajiri children syndrome, kidnapping, malnutrition, etc. still rear their ugly heads and therefore pose a serious challenge to the proper development of the child especially in states where the Child’s rights law is not in place”.

According to him, “ the impact of COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore the level of vulnerability of children in most parts of the world including Nigeria where a lot of children could not continue with their education as a result of poverty and deprivation because their parents or guardians could not afford an online system of education”.

Unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children have been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in the interior of southern British Columbia.

The grim discovery at the former school near the town of Kamloops was announced late on Thursday by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc people after the site was examined by a team using ground-penetrating radar.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” said Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, in a statement.

Canada confronts its dark history of abuse in residential schools

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KUALA LUMPUR, May 28 — Friends of university undergraduate Rain Lee have been pointing out that he does not look like his parents since he was young.

While his father is tanned, his mother is much fairer than him.

Lee, 20, said in secondary school, a teacher actually asked his mother point-blank whether he was her real child.

“Things boiled over when my father signed my university admission form.

The person in charge at the counter said my father should put himself as my guardian instead of father. All because his skin colour is different from mine.”

FOCUS - While India, bruised by the second wave, has exceeded 300,000 deaths from Covid-19, an increase in the number of orphans, exposed to all types of trafficking and exploitation, worries NGOs.

The baby was barely crying. The news shook India bruised by its second wave of covid-19: in Pune, in the south of the country, a child of a few months was found near the body of his mother, who died of the disease several days earlier, tells The Times of India . The neighbors had not dared to approach for fear of being contaminated.

In the chaos of the epidemic, what becomes of the children of the 300,000 deceased from covid-19? The authorities counted on Wednesday, May 27, 577 new children who lost both parents to the coronavirus and were placed in orphanages during the month of April. But that's without counting all those who vanish in nature. Illegal adoptions, prostitution, forced labor: in India, 50,000 children go missing each year. It was before the pandemic.

The situation is chaotic, people are afraid. They dare not approach a potentially sick child

Akancha Shrivastava

A woman is being investigated over allegations of medical child abuse for falsely ascribing illnesses to her 6-year-old adopted daughter, Q13 Fox Seattle reports.

Sophie Hartman adopted her daughter from Africa as an infant and over the last four years, the child has had over 500 “unnecessary” medical appointments and procedures, including a surgically implanted feeding tube and well as a cecostomy tube, to help flush the intestines, according to court documents.

"This situation is a case of medical child abuse,” a report from the child’s care team reads. "It is not necessary to know the possible motivation of a caregiver, only the outcome of the behavior. It is my concern that this pattern has resulted in unnecessary medical testing, medication, procedures, surgeries and debility of this child."

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Baby Farming, A Victorian Horror Story

Even the most sheltered among us have heard horror stories of foster care and adoption, but back before there were arms of government to protect wards of the state, there were orphanages. And before orphanages, there was baby farming.

“Baby farming” was a term coined during the Victorian Era to describe the practice of taking custody of unwanted children or those whose parents were unable to care for them, for a small fee. Essentially, a baby farm was a for-profit orphanage. The practice of baby farming was most widespread in urban areas of late-Victorian Era England, but it was also prevalent in North America and Oceania.

In an era when the most prevalent form of contraception was abortion, for working-class Victorian women who found themselves unable to care for a child, a less dangerous alternative was to surrender their newborn or, “put them out to nurse” at baby farms for a small weekly fee. Most women who chose this route assumed that their child would be properly cared for and receive a wet nurse, attention, room and board at the very least. After all, as referenced heavily in the writings of Jane Austen, wealthier women were also known to put their infants in the care of wet nurses – women who were not the childrens’ biological mothers, but who would breastfeed the children. The fictional character Grenouille of Perfume, as well as the titular character of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist were both residents of baby farms.

In 1834, The Poor Law Amendment Act allowed poor, unwed mothers to be given food, money, or clothing from the parish only if they went to live in the workhouse. According to the Ultimate History Project, because of the extremely dire conditions of work houses, “many of the women eligible for workhouse placement chose to place their children elsewhere so that they could continue to work and earn money – outside of the workhouse.”

Story at a glance

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in a case over religious foster care agencies discriminating against same-sex couples.

The case pits religious conservatives and those who don’t believe in same-sex marriage against the LGBTQ+ community.

LGBTQ youth are over-represented in the foster care system compared to cisgender and heterosexual youth.

Since the day after the last presidential election, LGBTQ parents and hopefuls have been on edge, waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether they can have a family of their own.

Mumbai: As many as 2,290 children in Maharashtra have lost either one or both parents to COVID-19 infection so far, sources said on Thursday. While 2,183 children have lost one parent, 107 lost both the parents during the pandemic, the sources in the state Women and Child Development Department said.

"The government has got custody of 10 out of the 107 children as there is nobody to look after them," they said. The data about the orphaned children has been compiled based on the inputs given by the district task forces headed by the collectors.

The government had set up a 10-member task force in each of the 36 districts in the state to identify the children, who were orphaned due to the pandemic.

The task force will also oversee the arrangements of their shelter and supervise their adoption to ensure that there is no trafficking and exploitation.

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Hiring Project Supporter Expertise Center Intercountry Adoption

Ministry of Justice and Security

V 2.0 dated. 15 August 2018

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DAS Office IUC VenJ Quotation

A Mother’s Story

We are in a hotel room in a sub-Saharan African metropolis. We sit across from each other on chairs that somehow seem too tall compared to the small coffee table between us. It is late afternoon and the sun is hanging low, just above the rooftops – large, dusty and orange. Yet, the heavy curtains are drawn and the room is cool and the light dim. The sound of rush hour traffic fills up the room and I close the balcony door behind her to avoid any background noise on the recording.

“How old were you when you got pregnant?” I ask as I sit back down.

“I was 16. Same age as she is now”.

She tells me that she was in a relationship with the child’s father but that the pregnancy was not planned. She was still in school and her mother got so angry that she threw her out of the house. They found a rental home but money was tight and they were not able to give their daughter what she needed.