<<previous | index | next>>
Human Rights Watch recommends that all governments and
international donors address the issue of access to education for AIDS-affected
children through the framework of internationally recognized human rights. A
human rights framework guarantees the right to education for all children,
cautioning against special treatment for any population but mandating steps to
address the particular factors that keep the most vulnerable children out of
school. It further recognizes the right of all children to an alternate means
of care if they are temporarily or permanently deprived of the care of their
parents.
- Immediately follow up on existing policies and
proposals to extend protections to AIDS-affected children. The
governments of Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda have begun to draft or
implement national strategies to assist orphans and other children
affected by AIDS, and these strategies should be completed and implemented
with the greatest urgency. Immediate actions might include: in Kenya,
expanding plans to provide cash subsidies to 2500 orphans to include all
AIDS-affected children in need of financial assistance; in South Africa,
completing the national action plan on orphans and vulnerable children and
finalizing local strategies for supporting community-based organizations;
and in Uganda, implementing small grant programs to community-based
organizations that link children to social services and serve a child
protection function.
- Enact and enforce protections against both direct and de
facto discrimination in access to education. Governments should
review relevant legislation and judicial decisions to ensure that the
right of AIDS-affected children to non-discrimination in access to
education and other social benefits is explicitly recognized in national
law. This right should include protection against de facto
discrimination, or discrimination resulting from underlying
vulnerabilities as well as from intent or animus. Governments should use
demographic and household surveys, as well as studies of children not
captured by these surveys (for example, street children), to monitor
school enrollment among AIDS-affected children, including orphans and
children whose parents are chronically ill. At the policy level, they
should create links between ministries of education and national human
rights commissions to develop a specific policy and strategic plan for
preventing systemic discrimination in access to education for
AIDS-affected children.
- Fulfill the right to free primary education. Lifting
financial barriers to primary education benefits AIDS-affected and
non-AIDS-affected children alike. Governments should ensure that no child
is ever denied his or her right to education because of school fees or
related costs of education. Strategies to eliminate or reduce the costs
of attending school could include lifting fees, providing stipends
conditional on school attendance, provision of free uniforms or lifting of
uniform requirements, provision of free textbooks, provision of
transportation or free school meals to attract poor children to school.
- Provide alternate parental care for all children who
need it. Governments bear the responsibility to ensure that children
deprived of parental care due to AIDS-related sickness or death are cared
for by alternate means, such as foster care. Governments should review
their constitutions and child protection legislation to ensure not only
that child abuse and neglect are punishable offenses, but further that all
children deprived of parental care have access to foster care or its
equivalent. They should provide the necessary legal recognition and
oversight to caregivers to ensure that children are protected from abuse
and neglect in the home, including discrimination in favor of biological
children and denial of access to education. They should set out clearly,
in law and policy, the rights and responsibilities of all individuals and
organizations caring for children affected by AIDS. They should ensure
all children access to a mechanism, such as an official child advocate, to
ensure that the best interests of the child are taken into account in any
determination of alternate parental care.
- Strengthen the capacity of community-based
organizations. Governments should strengthen the capacity of
national, provincial, and local departments of social development to
support community-based organizations (CBOs) that provide support to
AIDS-affected children. They should lift restrictions on the ability of
CBOs to provide effective care to children, such as arbitrary funding
bottlenecks and needless bureaucracy in access to government grants.
Provincial and local governments should provide timely and effective
assistance, oversight and technical support to both caregivers and CBOs.
They should specifically support the efforts of CBOs to monitor abuse and
neglect in the home, ensure care for AIDS-affected children whose extended
families do not care for them and advocate for childrens right to
education before school authorities.
- Protect parents and other
caregivers from abuse. With particular attention to female-headed
households, governments should identify and immediately remedy, in both
law and enforcement, human rights abusessuch as property grabbing, wife
inheritance, and unequal access to social benefits, including health
carethat impede parents (including those living with HIV/AIDS) and
caregivers ability to provide for their children, including providing
support for education.
- Review school policies and practices. School
officials should be restricted from barring children from school for
actual or perceived HIV status, HIV status of their parents, or difficulty
meeting expenses or administrative requirements (such as birth
certificates) due to HIV/AIDS. Ministries of education should consider appointing
a focal point on HIV/AIDS who has expertise on AIDS-affected children in
addition to HIV/AIDS curricula. School administrators should re-evaluate
their policies, including registration requirements, to ensure they do not
place undue burdens on children deprived of parental care. They should
liaise with community-based organizations to identify AIDS-affected
children, and facilitate CBOs efforts to monitor these childrens school
attendance and performance. Schools should also develop explicit policies
on AIDS-affected children and facilitate the creation of counseling, peer
support, and HIV/AIDS education programs that include addressing
AIDS-related stigma and discrimination.
To international
agencies and donors to HIV/AIDS programs operating in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda, including the World Bank, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria, the United Nations, and bilateral donors
- Advocate for legal and policy reform. International
agencies and donors should encourage governments both publicly and
privately to enact basic protections for children affected by AIDS,
including the right to alternate parental care to all those who need it,
and to non-discrimination in access to education. They should provide
technical support to law reform efforts. They should develop model
legislation for children affected by AIDS and model policies for
departments of education on HIV/AIDS and access to education.
- Support education for all. Donor governments
should meet existing pledges made at the 2002 International Conference on
Financing for Development (the Monterey Consensus) to work with
governments to provide long-term technical and financial support to ensure
every child is in school by at least 2015. Donors should prioritize increased
aid to developing countries that have developed and adopted sound national
education plans to achieve universal primary education as part of the
Education for All-Fast-Track Initiative.
- Support programs that strengthen extended families and
community-based organizations (CBOs). Donors should prioritize
investment in CBOs among interventions to assist AIDS-affected children in
attending and remaining in school. They should identify and eliminate
bottlenecks in international funding for CBOs both at the level of
international donors and national and local governments. They should
proactively map the existence of CBOs in targeted communities and assess
their quality and eligibility for funding. They should develop program
indicators that measure not only the number of children served by CBOs,
but also the educational outcomes of these children and the precise
services with which they are reached.
- Develop best practices for schools. Schools are
often ill-equipped to deal with the increasing burden of children affected
by AIDS and in need of feasible strategies within the constraints of
limited resources. International agencies and donors should identify,
pilot, and scale up good practices in creating supportive school
environments for children affected by AIDS. Possible strategies include
training teachers or guidance counselors to address bereavement issues,
supporting school-based peer support groups, keeping schools open at
night, liaising with community-based organizations to identify the most vulnerable
children, and sensitizing teachers to the needs of AIDS-affected children.
- Exercise caution and
oversight in supporting cash grants. Cash grants can be of great
assistance to all poor children, including AIDS-affected children, but
grants targeted exclusively at orphans or children in foster care can be
prone to exploitation by those seeking to take advantage of
benefit-eligible children, difficult to monitor, and administratively
cumbersome. Governments and donors supporting grant programs should
instead consider using financial need as a criterion for grants, or
providing in-kind benefits to children deprived of parental care, such as
school uniforms or waivers of school fees. They should work with
community-based organizations to ensure that cash or in-kind benefits go
to the neediest children in the community and are not diverted or
exploited.
- Involve children. Governments and donors should
meaningfully involve AIDS-affected children in the formulation of
education policies and programs. They should conduct evaluations of
AIDS-affected childrens school outcomes in which children are asked about
the difficulties they face in enrolling, remaining, and advancing in
school. They should support research into the precise hardships that
contribute to AIDS-affected childrens disadvantages in access to
education and develop protocols for involving children in this research.
[133] As
noted above, the recommendations in this report are not intended to single out Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda as the only countries where AIDS-affected children suffer
disadvantages in access to education, and other countries are urged to consider
these guidelines as well.
|