The alliance considers children without parental care (CWPC) to be boys and girls living apart from both their mothers and fathers. This is based on the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children which defines children without parental care as:

“All children not in the overnight care of at least one of their parents, for whatever reason and under whatever circumstances.”

CWPC includes boys and girls living in residential care, with extended or foster families, in child-only households, in juvenile detention, on the streets or with employers and/or exploiters.

20 years on from the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), evidence suggests an alarming lack of progress in achieving children’s fundamental right to grow up in a safe caring, and permanent family environment. Research, particularly from resource constrained regions, shows that the number of children living without parental care is not only substantial, but growing.  This is having a devastating impact on children’s rights.

The lack of attention given to vulnerable children means that there is an incomplete statistical picture of the number of CWPC. However the figures that do exist on some groups of CWPC suggest that there are at least 24 million children without parental care globally (1% of the child population).

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