This strategy paper fills the need of developing a programming strategy, reflecting UNICEF's 1996 policy on children in need of special protection measures, for children who have suffered temporary or permanent loss of family and/or primary care givers. While UNICEF has developed basic programming approaches in this area since 1989, the growing numbers of children who are being placed at risk by loss of care givers due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic has created the possibilities of a crisis of very larrge proportions for such children in the coming decade.