Tag: children’s

Suren says if he had a magic wand, he would change people to make things better. Children of the 2020 Artsakh War continue to struggle with trauma. A center in Kapan is trying to change that.

Armenia’s parliament ratified the Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, also known as the Lanzarote Convention. What does this mean for Armenia? Astghik Karapetyan explains.

Over 90 percent of the world’s student population have seen their education interrupted because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While education is the most visible issue, the impact on children cuts much deeper than is being recognized.

This is a story about the beautiful complexity and strength of mothers, especially those raising a child with a disability.

The Kotayk SOS Children’s Village was established in 1988 following the Spitak earthquake to offer immediate aid to those children who had lost their parents. Today, over 30 years later, SOS Children’s Villages continue to support children and their families in three locations across Armenia.

Dismantling decades of prejudice and perceptions about people with disabilities is not an easy task. The inclusion of children with disabilities and special needs in public schools is not an exception, however, attitudes are slowly changing.

Over a decade ago, Armenia’s government launched a pilot project called Deinstitutionalization of Orphanages. The initiative, which also sought the creation of a Foster Family program was not successful for many reasons, but mostly because it was never really child-centered. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs is set to change that.

Shushan Doydoyan is the head of the Personal Data Protection Agency of the Ministry of Justice in Armenia. In this piece for EVN Report, she writes about the need to protect children's personal data, the law and media's responsibility.

“There are no invalids in the USSR!” This much heard expression exemplifies how people with disabilities were stigmatized in the Soviet Union. How pervasive is the exclusion of people with disabilities in post-Soviet Armenia? Anais Bayrakdarian talks to experts working in the field and writes that the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable.