Children with Special Needs
Despite governments signing up to many a convention and seemingly supporting international guidelines on children with special needs, prejudices and exclusion still form part of everyday life for many children with special needs around the world.
The principle of ‘inclusive education’ put forward at the UNESCO-convened Salamanca conference in 1994 has been a major step forward, but a lot remains to be done.
Disease is not only the greatest cause of child death in the developing world, but it creates with it, particularly in the case of HIV/AIDS, a whole range of sub-issues, from special needs to discrimination and school absenteeism. Consider some HIV/AIDS statistics alone: 38 million people worldwide have HIV/AIDS, 2.3 million of them are children; and 12 million children in Africa alone are AIDS orphans.
Download the final report of the World Conference on Special Needs Education: Access and Quality, Salamanca, Spain, including the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education adopted in 1994 [PDF]
Since 1992, the projects for children with special needs have been carried out in the following countries:
Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, Egypt, India, PDR Lao, Mexico, Morocco, Russia, Uganda, Vietnam.
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