Many of you have asked us recently why we are adopting from Eastern Europe. Here are a few reasons why...
There are over 4 million orphans and homeless children in Russia and Ukraine. Officially, there are 700,000 orphans living in 2,000 state-run orphanages in Russia alone. That means that Russia has more orphans today than after World War II! Statistics show that only one out of ten Russian orphans becomes a functional member of society. The others are lost to drugs, crime and suicide. Millions of Russian children are on the run living on the streets or in underground sewers desperately needing basic food, medicine and clothes.
Russia's abandoned HIV children, 2006Russia has one of the fastest growing Aids epidemics in the world, with 100 new infections every day. Increasingly, women and their infants are being affected.
IBIS report on Birth Defects, 200610% of children in orphanages have birth defects indicative of pre-natal exposure to alcohol. According to standards of Modern Developmental Pediatrics children in Ukrainian orphanages are receiving care that is far from ideal.
Unicef Report on Poverty and Abandonment of Children in Ukraine 2005More than 100,000 children are thought to have been surrendered to orphanages due to poverty. - The number of children living on the streets has risen steadily over the past decade, creating urgent problems in human trafficking for forced prostitution, forced labour and sexual exploitation.
Report on HIV/AIDS in Ukraine, 2004Mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Ukraine increased from 2% of total infections in 1997 to 13% in 2001. Many of these children are surrendered to the orphanage system.
“On the state of the children in the Russian Federation”, 20034 million Russian children were born out of wedlock in the last 10 years. 400,000 illegitimate children were born in 2002, a 40 thousand annual increase.
Committee on the Rights of The Child in Ukraine, 2002Children in orphanages lack food, medical care, and suitable facilities. Mortality in orphanages is dramatically high. They have been called "death houses". At the beginning of 2000 it was determined that the financial situation of institutions for children with special needs had worsened and most of these children would be denied education.
The CoMission for Children at Risk, 2002About 15,000 Russian orphans leave orphanages each year, once they are 16 to 18 years old. Of these, 5,000 are unemployed, some 6,000 are homeless, around 3,000 resort to crime, approximately 1,500 commit suicide, and roughly half the girls are forced into prostitution.
Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, 2000After leaving their orphanages:
# 50% - fall into a high-risk category
# 40% - become drug users
# 40% - commit crimes
# 10% - commit suicide
European Children's Trust, 2000Over forty million children in the former Soviet Union are living in "genuine poverty".
Human Rights Watch, 1998.Orphans in Russia - of whom 95 percent still have a living parent - are exposed to shocking levels of cruelty and neglect. Infants classified as disabled are segregated into "lying-down" rooms, where they are changed and fed but are bereft of stimulation and lacking in medical care.
Of a total of more than 600,000 children classified as being "without parental care", as many as one-third reside in institutions, while the rest are placed with a variety of guardians. Thousands more are temporarily quartered in various public shelters and institutions under police jurisdiction simply waiting for an available space in an orphanage.
Thousands of children are abandoned to the state at a rate of 113,000 a year for the past two years, up dramatically from 67,286 in 1992. The evidence gathered reveals several systematic disadvantages imposed on young Russian orphans, which violate their fundamental rights to survival and development, and place them in a underclass.
