Children Affected by HIV/AIDS

Over 13 million of the world's children under the age of 15 have lost one or both parents to AIDS. The majority of people infected with HIV are young people in their reproductive years and most of them are parents. The size of this crisis is eroding the hard won social development successes of the past few decades - as well as threatening child development. This paper sets out to examine the situation of children affected by HIV/AIDS living in resource poor countries, and to analyze the nature of the responses by households and communities, programming organizations, governments and donors. A range of different programming responses for children affected by HIV/AIDS is explored with the aim of drawing out useful lessons of good practice for Save the Children UK and other programming organizations. This paper also aims to initiate discussion on, and explore possible solutions for, integrating a framework of children's rights in the context of HIV/AIDS programming.