Your support is needed to protect children and adults with disabilities in Ukraine. Everyone is suffering. But babies, children, and adults with disabilities in group homes, orphanages and institutions are lost and forgotten. In this conflict, they are in grave danger of being abandoned by staff -- facing starvation and death. DRI is sounding the alarm to protect the lives of people most at-risk. Even before the war, Ukraine’s extensive network of orphanages left children without the love, care, and protection of family.
Immediate attention is needed to protect people with disabilities in Ukraine and ensure their full inclusion in international relief efforts. Disability Rights International (DRI) is especially concerned about 100,000 to 200,000 children segregated from society in the country’s orphanages.
Guatemala City, October 13, 2021 - Disability Rights International (DRI) published a report detailing how survivors of the fire and children who were detained at Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asuncion in Guatemala are still at risk. On March 7, 2017, boys and girls protested the physical and sexual abuse, rape and trafficking they suffered at the institution Virgen de la Asunción. As a punishment, the girls who had protested were locked in a tiny auditorium overnight. In the early hours of March 8, a fire broke out and forty-one girls died.
At least 10 million children around the world grow up without the love and care of a family in orphanages, institutions and “residential care.” More than a billion dollars a year in development and charity money supports orphanages, residential care, and group homes.
Reflections, practices and call to action in advance of the CRC’s Committee Day of General Discussion on children’s rights and alternative care
Reflections, practices and call to action in advance of the CRC’s Committee Day of General Discussion on children’s rights and alternative care