How can make a choice?” “

“Throughout the world there are millions of children who have no family and survive in orphanages: they are nobody’s children”. The “child abandonment” emergency was underlined at the recent international conference held at Bellaria (Italy) by AIBI (Friends of Children Association), also through eyewitness testimonies from various European countries, many in Eastern Europe, in particular Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. A COMMON ASPECT. Many of these nations have a “dramatic” aspect in common: that of consigning thousands of orphaned children to oblivion without any prospect of hope for the future. That’s the case of the “social orphans” of Russia: children who have a family, but who have been abandoned by their own parents and left to be brought up in state orphanages. The situation in Russia is rather critical. According to Unicef data, the number of children in orphanages has risen from 421,000 in 1989 to 637,000 in 1999. The numbers include infants, but also teenagers who have by now lost, day after day, year after year, any hope of finding a family to adopt or look after them. The same goes for so-called ‘shadow children’, kids who are at the most critical age, adolescence, and so not taken into consideration by couples seeking children to adopt. THE CASE OF moldavia. Europe’s poorest countries, and those most incurious of orphans, also include Moldavia. Some 14,000 children are now living in orphanages scattered all over the country. Many others live on the streets in Chisinau, the capital, and shelter from the cold in the city’s sewers. They are children who have been abandoned, because they are ill or disabled, or juveniles who prefer of their own free will to live on the street rather than support desperate family situations. “The names of children suitable for adoption – explains Ludmila Ciocan, of the Moldanian section of AIBI – are published in the Official Gazette, but this does not happen on a regular basis. They may appear several times in the first weeks and then disappear into the blue. What is even worse is that only a few children, most of them without status or even civil registration, appear in the Official Gazette”. One of the most dramatic aspects of the adoption process in Moldavia is the selection of children: “Childless couples visit the orphanages to choose a suitable child for themselves – says Ludmila -. But how can you possibly choose a child when faced by so many other little eyes that gaze at you full of hope? Many of these children have even lost the will to cry, after so many tears shed in vain”. CHILD MOTHERS IN bulgaria. An equally heart-rending situation is that of Bulgarian child mothers. Unofficial data cited by AIBI speak of over 34,000 juveniles hidden away in orphanages in Bulgaria, many of them located in remote villages. “The operators of these structures are often untrained to care for or bring up orphaned children – says Krassimira Natan, AIBI representative in Bulgaria for the last two years -. In many cases the worst possible scenario happens: the children suffer violence, humiliation and sexual abuse, often perpetrated against very young girls, who then find themselves, against their will, pregnant at the age of only 16, and are then thrown onto the street to fend for themselves”. ALBANIA: ORPHANAGES BURSTING AT THE SEAM. Many of the countries that least respect the rights of the under-age are nations that have been afflicted by years of war and destruction, such as Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. As Sabrina Carcani, AIBI representative in the Balkan Countries, reports, “the orphanages in Albania are in a shameful condition. Infants up to the age of three are crowded together in a single room, sometimes even two together in the same cot. In Bosnia, though it’s a small country, no less than 17 orphanages are in operation”. “For the majority of children the orphanage represents the final solution – says Leila Izmirlitc, AIBI staffer in Bosnia -. Adoptions are hampered by strict bureaucratic controls; no central authority to coordinate adoption processes, and no law to regulate international adoptions, exists”. Romania: INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION BANNED. Then there are the former dictatorial regimes, such as Romania where over 83,000 children are “looked after” by the state social services. Of these 13,000 are living on temporary assignments in families, and half are “parked” in public and private institutes where they remain until the age of 18. The Romanian emergency is aggravated by another scourge: the country recently voted in favour of a bill on the protection of the under-age than bans international adoption. “The only circumstance in which the law permits it is when one of the spouses making the adoption application, domiciled abroad, is the grandparent of the minor in question – explains Daniela Trogu, AIBI representative in Romania since 2000 – The intention of the new law is that of preventing phenomena that, paradoxically, it only encourages, i.e. child trafficking, ‘do it yourself’ adoptions and abandonment. To prevent it we have sent an appeal and a collection of over 7,000 signatures to the European Commission and to the Romanian Parliament”.