'Crying for our elders: African orphanhood in the age of HIV and AIDS'

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has defined the childhoods of an entire generation. Over the past twenty years, international NGOs and charities have devoted immense attention to the millions of African children orphaned by the disease.

But in Crying for Our Elders, Kristen Cheney argues that these humanitarian groups have misread the ‘orphan crisis’. She explains how the global humanitarian focus on orphanhood often elides the social and political circumstances that actually present the greatest adversity to vulnerable children—in effect deepening the crisis and thereby affecting children’s lives as irrevocably as HIV/AIDS itself.

About Kristen Cheney

Kristen Cheney is senior lecturer in children and youth studies at ISS. Her research focuses on children’s survival strategies amidst difficult circumstances, mainly in Eastern and Southern Africa.