ABSTRACT
Over 22.4 million people live with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. By highlighting dilemmas and the unintended consequences of well-meaning interventions, this chapter questions the appropriateness and effectiveness of rights-based approaches to supporting vulnerable children, families and communities in the current care crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter explores how rights-based approaches to interventions oppose local values of family and community cohesion, and how frustration grows as the side-effects of interventions become apparent. It discusses how well-intended interventions can jeopardize care structures when they do not take into account the basic concept of intergenerational respect and local ways of organizing social security. The chapter discusses some problems that would be present to some degree even without the organizations that introduced a Western discourse on child rights and performed activities within this framework. It is vital, nevertheless, to follow the motivation and the good intentions of aid and development work all the way to the local level.
