The Summit and Pact for the Future are an opportunity for a future without child institutionalisation: it’s now up to world leaders to seize it
On 22 and 23 September 2024, world leaders gathered in New-York at the occasion of the Summit of the Future. The high-level intergovernmental event was an opportunity to take stock of the challenges facing present and future generations, and to take decisive steps towards a more sustainable future for all.
During the opening session of the Summit, UN Member States adopted the long-awaited Pact for the Future, with the Declaration on Future Generations and Global Digital Compact annexed to it. This policy package includes some action-oriented commitments, including some welcome references to children and support to families.
This is a most positive development. At a time when millions of children grow up outside of family care, many confined in institutions, Hope and Homes for Children is looking to decision-makers to take urgent action to support policies and interventions aiming to transition from institutional to family- and community-based care systems.
This goal must become a key feature in our global Sustainable Development Agenda. Currently, the Sustainable Development framework is ill-equipped to support child care reform, without any concrete indicators looking at children deprived of family care. This must be addressed, and the Sustainable Development Agenda needs to support the design and implementation of child care reform strategies and coherent social policies supporting them. Further, policies must be backed by adequate funding and implemented in close cooperation between national and local governments, aid agencies, international financing institutions, civil society organisations, and crucially, children themselves, their families and communities.
Hope and Homes for Children, with our 30 years of experience in supporting care reform across the world, aims to support international and national authorities in this goal. To this end, we have organised, on 16 September 2024, the first in a series of online Policy Dialogues, articulating the crucial links between global child care reform and the Sustainable Development Agenda. During this event, we unveiled our policy recommendations to adequately pursue global care reform in the context of the Sustainable Development Agenda:
Children in institutions are particularly vulnerable to trafficking and are commodified as assets to raise funds from tourists across the world.
• Condemn child institutionalisation and other forms of deprivation of family: At the global level, we urge for the unequivocal denunciation of deprivation of family in all its forms, in particular, but not restricted to, child institutionalisation. Child institutionalisation is recognised by global human rights frameworks and children’s rights experts as harmful to children, their health, safety, well-being and development. Institutions violate children’s rights, with violence, neglect, and abuse as pervasive features. Children in institutions are particularly vulnerable to trafficking and are commodified as assets to raise funds from tourists across the world. Child institutionalisation is an aberrant practice that must be eradicated and has no place in democratic, sustainable and equal societies. By committing to ending child institutionalisation, world leaders can take a stand to end a global injustice, and improve the conditions for childhood globally, benefiting, ultimately, wider protection and care reform.
• Pursue an inclusive approach to social protection to prevent family separation and build community resilience: In many cases, family separation could be prevented if national authorities take the necessary measures to support children and their families and adequately address the drivers of separation. Social protection is therefore a fundamental factor in reducing unnecessary separation of families in crisis, and strategies for social protection should be aligned with those for child protection and care.
• Set data collection mechanisms, evidence-based goals, and monitoring and evaluation systems at global, regional and national levels: Child care reform advocates have long warned that little progress can be achieved without robust data collection and strong progress monitoring indicators on children deprived of family care, including theirs and their families and communities’ circumstances, the root causes of separation, their outcomes, and the impact of policies implemented on the latter.
• Ensure the meaningful consultation of, and accountability to children, young and older people with care experience, their families, communities and the organisations representing them: Building a future where all children grow up in safe and loving families requires listening today to those children, young and older people who have known the harm of institutions and/or family separation, as well as their families, communities and the organisations that work on their behalf. To meaningfully engage them, world leaders must ensure that they reach them and provide them with an accessible platform to share their stories and guide the design of policies that concern them. In addition, world leaders must in turn make themselves accountable to these audiences, and be ready to report on progress made over time.
• Commit to national child protection and care reform through sustained financing, including global financing mechanisms: Eliminating institutions and family separation starts with the pursuit of the reform of national child protection and care systems. While the task at hand requires resolute global and national political will, Hope and Homes for Children is positive that it is attainable, and that solutions can be found in successful local and national examples of child protection and care reform. These examples must be studied and amplified, and in turn scaled up globally, adapted according to each national and local context where they are applied.
We will stand ready to support international, regional, national and local authorities in their efforts to support care reform.
For more information on the link between the SDGs and the movement for global child care reform, please read
- Our 16/09 Policy Dialogue briefing
- Our 2022 Publication ‘Families. Not Institutions’
