Limbo of abandonment” “

Tens of thousands of children are living “outside” a family and “inside” an institution in Europe. According to the data furnished by AIBI (Association of the Friends of Children), the worst situation is registered in Eastern Europe. In Russia there are over 720,000 “children of no one”: 2% of the overall juvenile population. The number of children in orphanages has doubled over the last decade. Over 14,000 children are forced to live in state institutes in Moldavia, while in Bulgaria their number rises to 34,000 and in Romania 40,000. The abandonment of minors also exists in Italy, where some 25,000 children are living outside a family or in conditions of semi-abandonment. Some 3,000 are in the 202 orphanages that are due to close down by 31 December 2006. Ten thousand are being temporarily adopted. RUSSIA, “TOO MANY” CHILDREN. “Over 200,000 Russian children are surviving today in the some 2500 orphanages scattered over the territory. These structures, however, are not enough and new ones are continuously being opened”, explains NINA REZINIK, senior civil servant of the Russian Federation, who has spoken of “too many children” with reference to abandoned minors in her country. The main reason why they remain without the protection of their parents is the deprivation of parental authority, determined by the spread of chronic situations of poverty among families. “The sudden transition to a market economy – explains Rezinik – has created thousands of paupers and left homeless thousands of children who run away especially due to domestic maltreatment and endemic family poverty”. The factors that contribute to the proliferation of homeless minors also include the growth of underage pregnancies. The social scourge of “street children” – over 5,000 run away from home each year – is closely correlated with that of juvenile crime and the high rate of drug addiction among very young children. A solution to the problem, says Rezinik, may be provided by adoptions. But if international adoptions are increasing, those within Russia itself have been reduced by half in recent years: “In 2004, 10,000 Russian children were adopted abroad. Despite the fact that many Russian families are eager to offer a home to these minors, bureaucratic and legislative difficulties make this process difficult. In Russia we are not against international adoption, but we are concerned by the expanding illicit traffic”. MOLDAVIA, CHILDREN SIGNED AWAY. “90% of the children placed in the 67 Moldavian orphanages are not in fact orphans: they have both parents and half of them are placed in homes at the request of their own family”. That is the disturbing reality described by MARIA GHERVAS, president of the Ordinary Tribunal of Chisinau, who explained to the recent AIBI conference that a simple signature of the biological parents is enough to prolong sine die the confinement of their children to orphanages. “The parent – she explains – asks the State for authorization to ‘place’ the child in an institution. The law prescribes that the request must be motivated, but in effect a situation of poverty is enough to oblige the State to assume responsibility for the minor”. The lack of respect for the norms that protect childhood thus places the institutionalised child in a context of being abandoned and forgotten by their own parents, “who have the right to renew their request for whole years”. “With the institutionalisation of children – continues Maria Ghervas – the State has usurped the role of parents, while the latter feel themselves exonerated of all responsibility and care for their own children, so much so that in many cases they don’t even bother to visit them”. THE LIMBO BEYOND POVERTY. The “limbo of abandonment” is not registered just in the European countries most hit by poverty, or those suffering the repercussions of a political system that for long obstructed the rights of children. “In all social contexts families abandon their own children and violence and maltreatment are not exclusive just to the most disadvantaged classes”, points out SOPHIE MARINOPOULOS, French psychoanalyst at the hospital of Nantes. She explains that in many cases it is blood ties themselves that fuel the limbo. “After biological birth – she says – there are two other types of birth: the first is ‘social’, which the child experiences when he/she is recognized as a son or daughter; the second is ‘psychological’, given by the perception of being loved and accepted”.