The Greenwood Encyclopedia Of Children S Issues Worldwide Sub Saharan Africa

From the skyrocketing AIDS rate in Haiti to the oppressive pollution in industrial China, from the violent street culture of Nigeria to the crippling poverty in Nicaragua, from child trafficking in Thailand to child marriages in India, this jam-packed six-volume set explores all these issues and more in an unprecedented look at the world's children at the dawn of the 21st century. In recent years, while many countries have enjoyed a higher standard of living and improved working conditions, others have been torn apart by war and incapacitated by famine, and are struggling to improve life for their children and their future. Recent concern over the world's children has resulted in a global attempt to define what constitutes an acceptable childhood. New attention has been paid, not only to healthcare and secondary education, but also to the right to play and increased access to technology. The UN's codification of children's rights has done much to expand our understanding of what is needed for healthy growth and development of children and youth. Organized by region, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children's Issues Worldwide is the first globally focused set of this magnitude, offering extensive, up-to-date coverage of these critical issues. Original chapters accessibly synthesize current data on key topics, including education, play and recreation, child labor, family, health, laws and legal status, religious life, abuse and neglect, and growing up in the 21st century.

Family Therapy with Muslims is the first guide for mental health professionals who work with Muslims in the family therapy setting. The book opens with a section defining the similarities across Muslim cultures, the effects of postcolonialism on Muslims, and typical Muslim family dynamics. The author then devotes a chapter to different models of family therapy and how they can specifically be applied to working with Muslim families. Case studies throughout the book involve families of many different backgrounds living in the West—including both immigrant and second generation families—that will give professionals concrete tools to work with clients of their own.

The disproportional loss of individuals to HIV/AIDS in their most productive years raises concerns over the welfare of surviving members of affected families and communities. One consequence of the rapid increase in adult mortality is the rise in the proportion of children who are orphaned. Sub-Saharan Africa, accounts for about 90 percent of these. Mainly due to the staggering toll of HIV/AIDS, research effort has focused on treatment and prevention. Children have received attention primarily in relation to 'mother to child transmission' and paediatric AIDS. These issues are important and compelling but fail to capture the whole story - the unprecedented surge in the number of children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. In this book we reflect on the plight of children classified as vulnerable, review interventions implemented to improve their welfare and grapple with the concept of vulnerability as it relates to human rights and the African child.

Childhoods at the Intersection of the Local and the Global examines the imposition of the modern Western notion of childhood, which is now deemed as universal, on other cultures and explores how local communities react to these impositions in various ways such as manipulation, outright rejection and acceptance. The book discusses childhoods in different regions of the world and boasts a range of contributors from several academic disciplines such as Sociology, Social Work, Education, Anthropology, Criminology and Human Rights, who are experts on the regions they discuss. The book argues against the notion of a universal childhood and illustrates that different societies around the world have different notions of childhood. This book is recommended reading for students, scholars and practitioners working with children in the Global South as well as internationally.

Today, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is creating millions of AIDS orphans who languish away in orphanages that lack the resources to take care of them. Millions of other children are living on the streets, trying to survive on their own, leaving them vulnerable to unscrupulous individuals who are exploiting them for the sex tourism business, or recruiting them into hazardous labor situations that injure or maim them. Other vulnerable children are abducted into the military as child soldiers and forced to commit horrific crimes that will haunt them forever. The educational system in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to decline as resources dwindle along with education expenditures, and governments spend more money on ammunition than books. As the AIDS epidemic spreads across the continent of Africa, the numbers of professionals such as doctors, nurses, and teachers are dwindling, leaving the educational and medical communities weakened. Meanwhile, the growth and development of Africa continues to stagnate. More and more failed social polices surface from the Western world such as forced austerity measures from the IMF and the World Bank, along with the Structural Adjustment Programs that hinder further growth and prosperity on the continent. The Social Problems of Children in Sub-Saharan Africa identifies and describes the numerous problems that children in Sub-Saharan Africa are facing today. The author has lived in Ghana, West Africa, and has used an ethnographic approach in order to better understand some of the most critical problems concerning children in the poorest region on earth: Sub-Saharan Africa.