Children's summer camp to highlight need for more social support

More than 600 children from ethnic minority, rural and urban areas of China will attend the 11th annual High Level Children's Summer Camp organized by Chinese National Committee for the Care of Children (CNCCC), with support from UNICEF from the 21-24 July 2014.  

The camp will bring together children with diverse backgrounds to interact with each other as well as interact with policy makers, engage in social activity and address challenges discrimination.  It is the final in a series of 25 sub national camps taking places in different provinces for 2000 orphaned and vulnerable children. The camps, which coincides with the 20th International AIDS Conference in Australia, originally started in 2004 to help children affected by HIV and AIDS. 

UNICEF and the CNCCC estimated that by the end of 2010, over a half million children were affected by HIV and AIDS in China. Among of these children, 200,000 lost both parents and over 7000 live with HIV/AIDS.  

Comprehensive social support for children and families affected by HIV is an essential element of the response to HIV.  Children and families affected by HIV are often the most vulnerable and marginalized, faced with poverty and social exclusion. 

Since 2000, the partnership between CNCCC and UNICEF has resulted in a number of critical findings on the situation of children affected by HIV and AIDS which has contributed to the development of a series of national and local policy guidelines on the care of orphan and vulnerable children.  The focus is to make sure HIV sensitive social protection policies are put in place to make sure that they reach households affected by HIV and AIDS through broadly inclusive approaches.