24 million children without parents

There are at least 24 million children growing up without a parent and in poor countries their number is growing rapidly, a British charity dealing with children's rights has warned.It comes as global celebrations are held to mark the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to protect children from abuse and ensure they grow up in a family environment.Launching a new report today, called Missing: Children without parental care in international development policy, Everychild says research shows there has been a "substantial and growing number of children without parental care, with devastating impacts on children's rights".

Around the world, the HIV and AIDS pandemic has doubled the number of orphans in sub-Saharan Africa since 1990, the research shows. And the recession is worsening factors such as poverty and lack of access to education in much of Africa and Asia. In parts of Southern Africa up to 34% of children are growing up without parental care compared to 1.8% in the UK. The former Soviet Union is a key area for concern. More than a million children there are still living in institutions the report describes as "damaging," even though most of them are not orphans. They still have at least one parent alive. Russia now has more orphans than during Soviet times and is not fulfilling the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the country’s child's rights ombudsman, Alexei Golovan, told a news conference this week."There is no national plan of action here," he said. "There should be a government strategy but there is not."

Filipova recently lost both her children to an orphanage. The mother, in St Petersburg, said the police had taken away her two sons, aged six and two, in May.She told a BBC correspondent that they were taken because "I cannot walk and my husband does not work". She is desperate to get her children back. "I feel that my children are crying," she said. "I sleep very badly at night and when I wake up they are not there. I really miss them." The Russian authorities are far too keen to take children away from families in difficulty, with poverty often given as the official reason, say experts. "The social services need to work with families when they start getting into difficulty so the families can sort themselves out and keep their children," said Alexei Golovan. "Often here we only intervene when families have got into a complete crisis and then it's easier to take the children away." Some 10% of children who have been in orphanages in Russia later commit suicide, according to EveryChild.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children