Namibia’s orphaned children win rights to care

Orphaned children living in Namibia’s residential care homes now all have a right to a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear and food to eat thanks to newly set government standards. Namibia Children’s Home has been home to Treza Cooper, 11, for three years. She’s a bright student. When she was asked to be a child representative to a group developing minimum standards for residential child care, she accepted.

When the government launched the ground-breaking minimum standards programme at the government-run home where Treza lives, she was on hand to watch. “The facilitators asked us children to play games and draw pictures of the care facilities we’d like to live in,” Treza said. Little did she know these would be the starting point for setting future standards.

Namibia has an estimated 155,000 orphans, and 250,000 orphans and vulnerable children – more than a quarter of all children in Namibia, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Extended families are increasingly struggling to care for them and alternative care systems are under strain. More than 105,000 children receive government child welfare grants to help their families provide for their care and support, according to figures from the United Nations (UN). But there is more and more pressure on the 42 care homes currently caring for more than 1,000 children.

The minimum standards were created at the suggestion of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body in charge of enforcing the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and were based on standards developed in the UN. “The minimum standards ensure that children have a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear, good food to eat, but most importantly, that care homes and the care-workers give children care, support and love,” said Marlene Mungunda, the Minister of Gender Equality and Child Welfare.

Before the minimum standards were set, there were no basic levels for child care homes to meet. Some independently run homes were reported to be filthy, with no basic health and safety standards, and others were reported to have had incidences of sexual abuse. Some according to a UN report, took in children just to raise funds for their organizations, when the children could have been placed with their families. “Though such residential facilities for children should be seen as a last resort, these minimum standards are one step closer to ensuring that children’s rights to the best care possible are met in residential child care facilities,” said Matthew Dalling of the United Nations Children’s Fund.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children