Orphans and orphanages in Nepal are experiencing a very difficult time at present on a number of fronts. The first of these is that the ongoing political instability combined with an already high incidence of chronic poverty means that many families simply cannot afford to keep their children, especially if they are girls. As you probably know, girls and women do not enjoy an equal footing with boys and men in the minds and attitudes of many Nepalis. Children born with disabilities, even if relatively minor by developed world standards, are also often discarded. Today we saw a number of babies and children with various disabilities such as deafness, blindness, down’s syndrome and muscular dystrophy. In spite of the additional challenges these children face, their spirit, smiles and energy were infectious and inspiring.
Another challenge faced by orphanages in Nepal is the alarming rise in the number of people who have basically rented a house, put up a sign and declared their premises an orphanage. Even worse is that many of these places are buying (and in some cases kidnapping) babies and children from remote and poor areas and placing them in their ‘orphange’ in order to show foreigners who obviously then make donations for the care of the children. You can imagine how little of these donations are put towards the care of the children. Some of these establishments have also been selling babies to naïve foreigners for obscene amounts of money. This kind of behaviour has tarnished the reputation of all orphanges in Nepal and made things much more difficult for the legitimate organisations.
As a result of the alarming increase in the numbers of these ‘dodgy’ orphanages the government recently put a hold on all overseas adoptions until systems could be put in place to prevent this black market. Unfortunately as with most things in Nepal it has taken longer than expected to rectify the situation as the ministerial post responsible for handling this situation keeps changing and in fact at present does not have anyone to fill it! This causes particular concern for the legitimate orphanages which would typically be adopting out a reasonable number of their orphan babies to overseas parents – as this has ceased they are rapidly running out of space. Just because the government has stopped processing adoptions does not mean that children and babies have stopped becoming orphans.
This is just another example of the many challenges facing Nepal on a daily basis. You could be forgiven for thinking that the people must have given up hope but we can proudly report that we were shown around the orphange by a dedicated member of staff there who was as optimistic and determined as a person could be. Of course all of the children were playing as though they didn’t have a care in the world and we continue to hope for and work towards a Nepal in which this is true.
