SOS Children’s Villages is boosting resources allocated to child safeguarding in high-risk environments to create a safer environment for children and young people. While nearly all countries in the world have pledged to protect children from all forms of violence and abuse by ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many have...

As SOS Children’s Villages continue to roll out its Safeguarding Action Plan for 2021-24, SOS Children’s Villages has been soliciting comments from young people on how best to tackle some of the issues raised in the latest Child Safeguarding Annual Report. Interviews with young people for a newly launched ‘Safe Behaviours’ project – aimed at preventing peer-on-peer violence among children –revealed that better understanding, education and...

SOS Children’s Villages has made progress on its Safeguarding Action Plan since its launch in June 2021. The plan, available on our safeguarding info hub, aims to address key learnings of recent years, including those gained through our commissioning of the Independent Child Safeguarding Review. The organization is releasing today an interim progress report that summarizes our progress particularly in eight prioritized actions:...

Mental health is as important to children’s safety and wellbeing as their physical health. This understanding has led SOS Children’s Villages to emphasize mental health as a core component of care in recent years. We recognize that negative experiences such as abuse can adversely impact a child’s mental health, and that neglected mental health concerns have the potential to...

SOS Children’s Villages operates in more than 130 countries around the world, some of which have a higher safeguarding risk than others. In some countries, children’s rights, including the right for protection, are not deemed a priority in society due to long standing sociocultural practices. National legislation does not include specific child protection laws and...

By Coenraad de Beer, Child Care and Safeguarding Team Leader, SOS Children’s Villages International. Safeguarding children and young people is at the heart of the work of SOS Children’s Villages. Through our child safeguarding framework, we are committed to creating and maintaining a caring and protective environment for every child in our programmes. Keeping that commitment...