When Manish sent his two children to an orphanage, he was convinced he did what was best for them. According to a case study by the nonprofit Next Generation Nepal (NGN), he was raising them by himself, as his wife was in prison. Having come to Kathmandu from an impoverished village in the mountains, he had no support from his family, financial or emotional. He was not able to provide for Archana and Balaji, and he was convinced that they would at least get proper care and a good education in an orphanage. After all, it was supported by foreigners who came to the country to volunteer. He was sad about dropping them off and missed them a lot, but he believed he was doing the right thing. It felt odd to him that he never was allowed inside the rooms, but he assumed the best.
So his shock was incalculable when he was contacted by social workers at NGN, which rescues children from abusive institutions and reunites them with their families. The social workers told him that his children had been abused at the orphanage and the Nepal’s Central Children Welfare Board had shut down the institution. Instead of being cared for, as Manish had been promised, his children had become a commodity in the business of orphanage trafficking.
IIdeally, orphanages are institutions where educated caretakers look after children who have no family members who can take them in. The leading principle should always be that institutionalization is the last resort, as family-based care systems are proven to be better for children. In some countries, though, orphanages have turned into businesses — and well-intentioned volunteers have unknowingly contributed to this trend.
Combining travel with short-term volunteering (“voluntourism”) has become increasingly common in the last decade or so. To many travelers, there is great appeal in doing good deeds in an “exotic” location while polishing the CV. One of the most popular areas for volunteering is work with children.
Unfortunately, volunteering in orphanages has contributed to the rise of an orphanage business. Orphanage managers and traffickers have recognized the willingness of foreigners to donate or volunteer for a good cause and have found ways to take advantage of this practice.
There is a demand for orphans, as institutions need to be filled with children to be profitable for their operators and staff. In absence of enough “real” orphans, many times orphanages turn to traffickers to supply children. They also actively look for poor children in their vicinity and convince the parents that their kids would be better off in the orphanage. (In fact, two-thirds of children in registered homes have at least one living parent, like Manish.)
Technically in Nepal, visitors on a tourist visa cannot volunteer, but the government turns a blind eye to the practice, knowing that it brings a lot of revenue to the country. As a result, the sector is unregulated and no one really knows how many volunteers come to the country to work with children and in orphanages per year.
“Many of these volunteers have good intentions, but the financial donations they give inadvertently fuel the business of profit-making orphanages,” said Martin Punaks, NGN’s country director. “There are some good children’s homes in Nepal. [But] if most of the money donated towards children’s homes was spent on projects which support rural family and community livelihoods and education systems, there would be no need for children’s homes in the first place, and the children would never need to leave their families.”
According to a 2009 Child Protection Centers and Services International report, there are an estimated 16,000 children in registered children’s homes or orphanages in Nepal alone, not counting those in the unregistered institutions. Sixty percent of these orphanages were established between 2000 and 2008, and ninety percent are located in the five main tourist districts where they have easy access to travelers, volunteers and potential donors.
IIn countries like Nepal, traffickers often lure families from poorer rural areas into believing that their children would have a better life and better education in the capital and make them pay between USD $200 and $500 — a substantial amount of money in Nepal — for this opportunity. Many rural families recognize the value of a good education for their children and see the only chance for their offspring in Kathmandu or other major cities.
A trafficker does not always take children away, though; sometimes, as in Manish’s case, a parent may drop them off in the orphanages. To fill their orphanages, managers actively promote their institutions amongst poor families as a promise for better education and care.
Once the children are separated from their families, some traffickers and orphanage managers prevent contact with family members and sometimes even fake paperwork to make it look like the children do not have any living family members. Many times, the traffickers are family members or people known in the village, so that the parents do not suspect anything dubious when children are taken away. According to NGN, when children have asked for their relatives or had visitors, staff have threatened them, telling them they would be punished for talking about relatives or trying to establish contact.
In a 2015 report, the Central Children Welfare Board (CCWB) states that a majority of children’s homes in Nepal do not adhere to the minimum requirements set by the government for institutions to honor children’s rights and promote their wellbeing. In the worst cases, children are not fed and housed appropriately and, due to lack of supervision and care, are left to fend for themselves. Donations given to the institutions do not reach the children but are instead intercepted by the staff or the managers.
TThe CCWB is responsible for monitoring children’s homes. Volunteers or family members often alert them to abusive institutions, and once the CCWB collects enough information to prove that an orphanage does not follow the standards set by the government, they coordinate a rescue in collaboration with the police.
Organizations like NGN collaborate closely with the CCWB and the authorities during these rescues. NGN runs a transitional home where children are hosted until they can return to their families. Finding their families can feel a lot like police work, because many times the children cannot remember clearly where they came from and their records have been faked or are missing.
Once the family is found, reintegration is a very sensitive task. When the social workers first contact the families, many are not even aware that their children had been trafficked into a harmful system.
“Our social workers have to be very sensitive in approaching the parents,” says Punaks. “Parents send their children to Kathmandu believing they are acting in their best interest, and finding out that they have actually done something harmful is a revelation not taken lightly.”
Nepal is not the only country where the increase in numbers of orphanages is a problem. In countries like Uganda, Ghana, and Cambodia, similar developments are taking place. Many big NGOs like Save the Children andUNICEF have already published statements against orphanage volunteering or tourism, as these activities seem to be driving factors for this development.
In Cambodia, for example, the number of orphanages has increased by 75 percent from 2005 to 2010 while the number of orphans has decreased 50 percent. This trend has the government overwhelmed and struggling to keep up. Almost half of the children have been admitted to the institutions by the parents or relatives themselves. Poverty is the push factor, while the hope for a better education is the pull that orphanage managers learned to use. In Ghana, the percentage of children in children’s homes with at least one living parent is as high as 90 percent.
It is also important to note that volunteering in and of itself is not a bad thing — especially if the volunteer has a learning mindset and works at a trustworthy organization. But it is of utmost importance that volunteers do sufficient research to be certain that they do not accidentally support child trafficking or other unethical practices.
