Children without Parental Care: The Right to Have a Good Life
Haffiya Abdalla
Sudan has one of the highest rates of internally displaced people in the world: around four million people have had to leave their homes. Others have sought refuge in neighboring countries.
SOS Children’s Villages has been present in Sudan since the mid-1970s when it began its work in the capital city of Khartoum. The armed conflicts, which have been going on for five decades, have had a devastating effect on the lives of the Sudanese population. In addition to long-term programs which provide support to families and children, the organization has also run emergency relief programs in areas that have been badly affected by war and natural disasters.
The activities of SOS have responded to the changing needs of local children, young people, and families. For example, in response to the ongoing conflicts in Darfur SOS started an emergency relief program to support refugees by providing them with housing, counseling, training, and work. In the more permanent premises in Khartoum, young children can attend the SOS Kindergarten or the SOS Hermann Gmeiner primary schools.
The Family Strengthening Programme works with local agencies to enable children who are at risk of losing the care of their family to grow within a loving family environment. When children can no longer stay with their families, they are cared for by their SOS mothers in one of the SOS families.
Young people can live in special houses where they are guided on their way to independent life by professionals.
Director-General of Shamaa Organization, Nour Hussein Al-Seyoufi, called on businessmen to provide support for children without parental care and to contribute to creating a safe society for children and a family incubator that provides support, care, and a real community bond.
Al-Seyoufi said after distributing family food support to children and young people without parental care, in cooperation with a group “Music for Peace” under the auspices of the Italian Aid Program and the SOS Children’s Villages organization, said, “We strive to provide a specific service that has its privacy for the segment of children, youth and families.”
Al-Seyoufi said that the challenges facing working in these issues are great, noting that Shamaa has been implementing programs, projects and a number of plans over the past years in order to publicize the rights of those without parental care, as well as mothers who are victims of the societal reality, noting that care institutions Childhood suffers in how to inform children of the truth of their reality, and stressed that the alternative systems that Shamaa initiated in cooperation with the relevant authorities, to bypass this point failed to jump over the barrier of how to inform children of their reality without any impact or reversals of that fact, but since the founding of Shamaa has been searching for changing Children’s lives better and accompanying the mothers of the victims in the community, adding that the study emphasizes the need to support the victims to get out of the fragile reality and to engage in life vigorously by strengthening the mothers and enhancing their abilities and capabilities to play their role towards child in a society that is not satisfied and the way it came, and this does not negate the rights of children in life. Enjoying full respect, dignity, and opportunity in a society in which their rights are recognized.
The National Director of the SOS Children’s Villages Organization Dr. Abdul Rahman Muhammed Mubarak said that the organization cares and protects the largest segment of children without parental care. He called for continued support for those children by the other national organizations, praising the role played by Sama’a in protecting and caring for children without parental care.
He pointed out that the basic idea of the organization is to build homes for orphaned and abandoned children, and this idea is similarly applied in all countries of the world, taking into account the cultural differences that characterize each country. So children’s villages across the Middle East and North Africa are working in a way that suits the needs of the local population.
Accordingly, “we find a variety of programs implemented across the region such as children’s villages, family empowerment programs, vocational training programs, and others”.
Children’s Villages has worked directly and alongside local organizations to enable families and communities to work effectively to protect, care for and care for their children and youth.
