of the current mechanism1. The draft Civil Code that is currently under finalization, once adopted, shall be the unique instrument for adoption. The consent of the adopted child shall be sought if they are an adult or aged above 16. In 2014, the Government adopted the Procedure Manual on Child Adoption Chain in Cameroon. The document presents the procedures for the temporary placement of children. With regard to the family care of children with trained wet nurses, the distressed children care policy revolves around two major aspects: temporary administrative family placement and institutional placement. In the first case, children are placed in foster families pending a possible adoption. In the second case, they are either placed in public institutions, namely Care Centres for Distressed Children (CAED)—four in number (Garoua in the North Region, Yaounde in the Centre, Ekondo Titi in the South West, and Ambam (a border locality in the South Region)—or placed in approved private care institutions. The Government intends to continue setting up new CAEDs, within the limits of the budget available, in order to extend care services to reach target groups in all Regions. There has been a net progress in the consideration of adoption-related concerns in draft laws. More concretely, the Procedure Manual on Child Adoption Chain is testimony of the Government’s dynamism in terms of child adoption. However, the non-adoption of the Civil Code currently being updated is hampering the effectiveness of measures taken in this connection. To remedy the situation, recommended measures are geared towards placing children in approved centres; bringing in legal counsels into adoption processes; carrying out a comprehensive study on the current situation of adoption in Cameroon; updating and publishing the statistical record of adopted children on a yearly basis; carrying out systematic controls of registers in orphanages and foster care centres; raising awareness among populations on adoption and child trafficking phenomena and developing measures to prevent fraudulent adoptions. d) Separation from Parents (Art. 25) In order to ensure optimal protection for children deprived of their family environment, the Government, through the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, compiled a list of families that could temporarily receive children deprived of parental care. With regard to orphans and vulnerable children, particularly, MINAS has developed a strategic plan and produced a handbook for their care. A data collection tool on OVCs is under experimentation in three priority regions (East, North and Far-North). Its final assessment will help scale-up, which is dependent on appropriation by the various stakeholders. In addition, activities to promote the health, educational and psycho-social care of these OVCs were carried out in all ten regions with the support of UNICEF. It is equally worth mentioning the organization, in 2013 and 2014, of two interregional 1 This rejection was on grounds of limited timeframe, as the commitment had to be implemented by 2017, when the next Review is expected to hold. 29