Across the hardest-hit countries of sub-Saharan Africa the HIV/AIDS epidemic is causing immense distress and impoverishment to children. In this region alone, some 12 million are estimated to have lost one or both parents to the disease, but this headline figure misrepresents and understates the magnitude of the problem.

The challenge for policy is not to reach 12 million individual children needing assistance, but to design policies and interventions that address the diverse needs of a range of poor and vulnerable children in societies affected by AIDS - a far more ambitious task.

The articles in this IDS Bulletin discuss the complexity of HIV epidemics and their impacts on children, as well as the importance of factoring in the role of such children in the dynamics of the epidemic itself.

Themes covered are: poverty is the backdrop but not the driver of the epidemic; inequities by age, gender, geographical origin and economic status mark vulnerabilities and create circumstances where transmission can flare; it is important to define 'family' within local contexts to avoid misunderstandings; the majority of children of concern are aged 11 and older (not the younger children who tend to excite western compassion); the fundamental rationale for responding is that children have rights; migrants tend to fall between the cracks; and diversity of circumstances must be acknowledged.

The combination of policy case studies and comparative quantitative political science analysis draws important conclusions about how to make policy work, from inception to implementation.