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VII. Detailed Recommendations

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.

To national, provincial, and local governments in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda133

  • 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 children’s 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 abuses—such as property grabbing, wife inheritance, and unequal access to social benefits, including health care—that 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 children’s 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.

To the abovementioned governments and donors

  • 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 children’s 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 children’s 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.


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