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UNICEF calls on Eastern Europe to accelerate reforms on child care services
The UN children's agency, UNICEF is calling on governments in Eastern Europe to accelerate reforms on social child care services in response to the current economic crisis.
Children playing
UNICEF says that social welfare services in the region are not equipped to support the most vulnerable families and their children.
The agency notes that this is happening as the world celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
UNICEF's Regional Child Protection Specialist for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Anna Nordenmark Severinsson, says in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine there are over 100,000 children growing up in institutions.
"Poverty and disability are major factors which push families to abandon their children in such institutions. Even before the crisis in some of these countries, we were finding disproportionately high numbers of children and disabled children abandoned in institutions. And in the times of this crisis, without adequate social protection and access to services families have no other choice but to leave their kids in institutions."
Senior government officials from the five East European countries will hold a three-day meeting in Moldova to discuss how to accelerate child care reforms.
Dianne Penn, UN Radio.
(duration: 1'21")
