Our CEO responds to Syria’s Stolen Children documentary
This investigation by Lighthouse Reports with BBC Eye and The Observer and four other partners makes one thing very clear: the world must wake up to the dangers of orphanages and consign them to the history books.
The investigation uncovers how, under Assad’s regime, hundreds of children were separated from their families and placed in orphanages. It is a shocking account of children hidden, renamed and used as bargaining chips in a brutal conflict. But while the context is extreme, it scratches the surface of a wider, urgent, hidden crisis: right now, orphanages are robbing millions of children of their childhoods.
Worldwide, 5.4 million children are growing up in orphanages, even though 80% of them are not orphans at all. With the right support, their parents or relatives could care for them. More than a century of research shows the harm these institutions cause: children face higher risks of abuse, violence, trafficking and trauma that can last a lifetime.
The charity Hope and Homes for Children has proven that closing orphanages and reuniting children with families is possible in every context. In Romania, the number of children warehoused in institutions has fallen from 100,000 to under 1,500. In Rwanda, thirty years on from the genocide, the country is set to become Africa’s first orphanage-free nation.
The reality is brutal. Half of children in orphanages experience violence, rape, neglect or trafficking. For every three months they spend inside, they lose a month of healthy growth. As adults, they are 23% more likely to become homeless and 50% more likely to end up in conflict with the law.
But despite the evidence of the harms they inflict on children, orphanages continue to operate. Some, like those run by SOS Children’s Villages, are presented as “family-like villages”. But these villages are intrinsically institutional by their very nature, and it is the process of institutionalisation that is so de-humanising. It is a matter of record, and deeply worrying, that the number of appalling violations of children’s rights associated with SOS CV continues to grow, and even more so that the organisation has not committed to de-institutionalising its model. This has to change.
Today’s BBC documentary from Syria is just the latest in a litany of scandals linked to SOS Children’s Villages worldwide. We know institutions harm children. We know it is possible to redirect donations to get children back into families. And we now know we must do better. Since 1994, we have worked with governments worldwide to prove that it is possible to close the doors of orphanages forever. We fight to keep families together and to reunite those who have been separated. Where that isn’t possible, we help create new foster families. And we won’t stop until the very last orphanage is closed.
Mark Waddington is CEO of Hope and Homes for Children.
