ETHIOPIA: Reversed roles and stressed souls - child-headed households in Ethiopia

Submitted by crinadmin on

In many parts of Ethiopia, children as young as nine are carrying the burden of supporting their siblings. Child-headed households live a life of hardship and often misery, as they struggle to make ends meet, suffer emotional trauma and cope with a high cost of living. However, their devastating predicament has not been fully exposed, due to lack of research and information.

Until this study was conducted, most of the data on child-headed households in Ethiopia was only embedded in documents related to orphans and vulnerable children. Evidence on the phenomenon has been solely anecdotal. This lack of information has concealed the peculiar nature of their problems and the kinds of special support they need. Aid to child-headed households has, at best, been combined with support for orphans and vulnerable children.

At continental level, most of the existing data on child-headed households is outdated. This limits its value in informing programmes in the face of Africa’s fast changing circumstances. This study was carried out with the prevailing lack of data in mind, and it is hoped that it goes some way to bridging the knowledge gap on the phenomenon.

As a country-wide situation analysis, the study identifies the challenges of these children, as well as the underlying dynamics of the situation. The study has analytical depth and vividly presents cases that properly contextualise the challenges and resilience of child-headed households. It contains a wide range of heartrending cases, including the child of fourteen who relies on the rising and setting of the sun to tell the hour of her mother’s ART drug intake, and the fifteen year-old girl who has to cultivate the land by herself to feed her five siblings. The study cogently and sympathetically
captures the stressful lives of these children.

The African Child Policy Forum is glad to share the findings of this study as evidence of the plight of child-headed households for use in advocacy, policy and legislation development, social mobilisation and programme design.

pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/ACPFReport_headed_households.pdf

Organisation: 
The African Child Policy Forum
Attachment Link: 
http://www.crin.org/docs/ACPFReport_headed_households.pdf

Countries

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