Edmund Rice International

Free primary education (FPE) was introduced in Kenya in 2003 resulting in a dramatic increase in the number of children enrolled in schools. The influx of additional pupils has impacted negatively on the quality of education provided – for example overcrowded classrooms, lack of teachers and inadequate infrastructure but nevertheless many children still do not […]

Amidst the negative press coverage about the Catholic Church that has saturated the media following the ongoing revelations about sexual abuse and its cover-up, it was refreshing to read the following article that appeared online recently. The article, about the program run by the Christian Brothers in their former orphanage in Dum Dum is a […]

In Sierra Leone the Christian Brothers are embarking on a nation-wide birth registration sensitization program in collaboration with Cord-Aid Sierra Leone. Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that:- “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to […]

The work of the Christian Brothers in providing psycho-social and educational support to young people traumatized by war in Sierra Leone was acknowledged in a recent article in the local tabloid newspaper “We Yone”. Under the banner headline “Christian Brothers – Championing the Cause of Disadvantaged Children” the article featured an interview with David Yambusu […]

ERI supports the Caritas Internationalis HAART for Children global campaign to promote supply of and access to medicines for children living with HIV/AIDS and is encouraging all Edmund Rice Schools to become involved in the children’s letter-writing campaign. Contact us at ERI for further information.

It is difficult not to view the recent excommunication of the nine-year old girl who had become involuntarily pregnant because of rape as a clear issue of the rights of the child. She was violated, a victim of male violence and further subjected to defamation on the part of the Church authorities in Recife, Brazil. […]

How many of you read on the bus? Maybe you don’t ride the bus. My work commute takes 50 minutes, composed of a seven minute bus commute at the start, followed by a 30 minute tram ride on the Number 15 Geneva tram, and ending with an eight minute TPG Number 5 bus ride. In […]

The title above is a deliberately ironic comment on what is a serious issue. We all remember those movies about infanticide. The ones showing babies being plunged in tubs of water. It’s over, isn’t it. Well, yes, infanticide has been illegal for quite some time in India. But statistics are telling another story. The gender […]

We have come a long way from a time when violence against children and young people in the form of corporal punishment was widely acceptable. Studies of childhood remind us that infanticide in ancient Greece was not a crime. It was not until AD 374 that the Roman Empire outlawed infanticide. Many authors, among them […]

A recent Amnesty International Report on human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) draws attention to the continuing perpetration of violence against children and young people in North Kivu. At its height some years ago the on-going conflict in the DRC involved about 30, 000 children and young people, some as […]