A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

young persons, without discrimination for reasons of parentage, to ensure their protection
against exploitation and harmful employment, and to establish a minimum working age. 86
• The Government of Liberia should recognize that all children, born in or out of wedlock, are
entitled to the same social protection. 87
• The Government of Liberia should ensure that special protection and assistance, including
alternative care, is provided to children who are temporarily or permanently deprived of
their family environment. 88 Such alternative care should aim toward continuity in a child’s
upbringing and to the child’s ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic background. 89
• The Government of Liberia should be guided in its efforts to trace and reunify by the Interagency
Guiding Principles on Unaccompanied and Separated Children. 90 These principles
emphasize family unity and the best interests of the child, as well as family reunification, and
provisional and long-term responses in emergency situations. 91 In addition, The Advocates
suggests that the Government of Liberia seek to implement the recommendations on Family
Reunification set forth in this report. 92
• The Government of Liberia should urgently adopt relevant legislation in order to issue
quality standards and establish a monitoring system for institutional homes and, in particular,
orphanages, as well as to increase allocations available to these institutions and to provide
training for their staff. 93
• The Government of Liberia should take all appropriate measures to ensure that nonorphan
children living in institutional homes are brought back to their families, taking into
consideration the best interests of the child. 94
• The Government of Liberia should evaluate and ensure that conditions in orphanages comply
with basic human rights standards set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child. 95
• The Government of Liberia should ensure that in cases of adoption, the child’s best interests
are of highest consideration. It should ensure that such adoption is authorized by competent
authorities and is permissible in view of the child’s status regarding parents, family members,
and guardians. 96 The Government of Liberia should seek to comply with the standards set
forth on adoption in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child, including the following:
o Establish competent authorities to oversee adoption matters and ensure they conform
with relevant laws and regulations; 97
o Ensure that safeguards and standards equal to those for national adoption are
available to a child undergoing an inter-country adoption; and 98
o Take all appropriate measures to ensure that inter-country adoptions do not lead to
trafficking or improper financial gain for the potential adopters. 99
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