“Together we must set out to correct the defects of the past.” Nelson Mandela
Today, 20 February, is World Day of Social Justice. Something worth pausing to reflect on. The fight for social justice, for equal rights and respect, is one that has been fought for a long time now and that will continue for what looks like some time to come. The fight for social justice is fought on many different fronts, because there is still social injustice in many, many guises. As usual, in this blog, I will highlight the way this particularly relates to vulnerable children around the world.
In itself, of course, making sure that children are taken out of institutions and are prevented from ending up in them, is a social justice issue. Because being separated from their parents for reasons other than their own protection and not growing up within a family goes directly again the Rights of the Child.
However, there are other issues at stake, those of minority groups, who usually struggle most to have their rights recognised. One of those minority groups is children with disabilities. In the blogs Disability as Reason for Institutionalisation (HERE) and What About Children with Disabilities (HERE), we have looked at how the current situation in many countries is making parents feel forced to give up their children to institutions, whether it is because of stigmatisation, lack of access to healthcare and rehabilitative care in the community or lack of access to suitable education.
What also became clear in those blogs, is that not only are children with disabilities disproportionately being sent into institutions, when institutions are closing down and the country starts moving towards family-based solutions, children with disabilities are often forgotten about and left behind. Meaning that they become an even greater percentage of all children in institutional care. This is something that needs to be fought.
Another group of children over-represented in institutions, are those from an ethnic minority background. In most of Eastern Europe, Roma children are disproportionately institutionalised. Similarly, Aboriginal children in Australia, Maori children in New Zealand and First Nation children in Canada are far more likely to end up in state care than other children in those respective countries.
So clearly a continued fight for social justice is necessary, hand in hand with the fight to move towards family-based solutions. Because if we do not look at what is causing these minority groups to be over-represented and how this can be prevented (whether through improved legislation, through training and awareness raising or through the provision of more appropriate support for these groups), if we do not secure social justice for them, we, as well as they, will have to face the consequences.
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