SOS Children’s Villages is actively supporting family tracing and reunification in Syria, while continuing to support children and young people without parental care. We stand with families searching for their children, and we are committed to uncovering the truth about children who were forcibly separated from their families and placed in care by the former regime.
During the Syrian war, many children were forcibly and unnecessarily separated from their families by authorities and placed into care, often without proper documentation. In this time of extraordinary instability, these placements reflected the absence of a child protection system grounded in international standards – in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.
SOS Children’s Villages condemns the former regime’s practices of forcibly separating children from their families and assigning falsified or incorrect names to children. We acknowledge that, under that regime, some children who had been forcibly separated from their families were referred to our care without the necessary documentation.
We took decisive action in 2018 to halt the placements of children into our care without proper documentation. It is our firm belief that children should never be separated from their families unless it is in their best interest – and only through a documented, child-centered process.
We recognize that, despite our best intentions, not all decisions made during this time met the high standards to which we hold ourselves. Learning from these shortcomings, we have taken active steps to ensure this does not happen again.
Princess Esméralda of Belgium surrounded by the CARE Belgium team: Daniel Thierry, Baroness Odile de Saint-Marcq and Grégoire Tolstoï (Photo: CARE Belgium)
CARE supporters and patrons arrive at Egmont Palace to support the charity's fundraising efforts (Photo: Royal Stories)