Children in crisis

As a child-focused organization, World Vision works to strengthen policies to protect children who are vulnerable to abuse and neglect. We focus our advocacy efforts on four specific child protection issues:

• Abuse of children as child soldiers
• Sexual exploitation of children
• Exploitative child labor practices
• Preventable disease and malnutrition

Click on the links above to learn more about each of these issues and how you can take action.

To address the specific needs of children vulnerable to exploitation, World Vision advocates for their protection and for the restoration of survivors. We partner with law enforcement agencies to assist in the identification and prosecution of those who abuse children.

Protecting children:
A biblical perspective on child rights

World Vision seeks to follow Christ’s example by working with the poor and oppressed.

For World Vision, “the poor and oppressed” include:

• Some 250 million children who work as child laborers to secure survival-level income for themselves and their families
• Children traumatized by war
• Children scarred by debt bondage, slavery, or sexual exploitation

World Vision’s advocacy to secure protection for children and respect for their rights stems from this experience.

We do understand the real pressures faced by children who become adults in rich societies changed by secularization and eroding social values.

To talk of “children’s rights” in these contexts may seem to further alienation between parents and children, bred by selfishness, materialism, and lack of responsibility.

Yet, World Vision’s own daily work is with children in places such as Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Nairobi, Kenya. We struggle alongside millions of children who fight to survive in families earning less than $1 per day. World Vision and its donors share the pain and grief of societies where 25 percent of the children die before they reach their first birthdays.

World Vision’s response to these children is born from the prayer of our founder, Bob Pierce, who asked, “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.” Living out that prayer, he began to raise funds for the orphans of the Korean War. More than half a century later, World Vision is determined to bring a Christian response to the needs of children suffering exploitation, abuse, violence, and trauma.

World Vision believes that each is precious to God. God’s burden of love for each of these children is not exhausted after the first nine months of their lives, nor even after the first 18 years. The murder of an 8-year-old child in the midst of war is as abhorrent as is the preventable death of a 5-year-old child from diarrhea.

World Vision’s mission statement is a call “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8) in a world of false priorities, gross inequalities, and distorted values. World Vision represents Christians from many nations working together for a world where all people’s God-given potential is respected as the ultimate human right.

World Vision focuses advocacy efforts on four specific child protection issues: child soldiers, sexual exploitation of children, child survival, and child labor.


The above excerpt was taken from the introduction of the World Vision publication, "Protecting children: A biblical perspective on child rights."