Orphan claim can’t be verified
The good majority of orphans in institutions are not actually parentless, according to the charity founded by author J.K. Rowling.
“An estimated 8 million children worldwide live in orphanages or residential institutions. Shockingly, 80% of these children are not orphans,” says Lumos, a group dedicated to ending the institutionalization of children by 2050. “Children need families, not orphanages.” Is it true? Well, maybe. The data Lumos relies on comes from credible sources, but the reality is the information available is outdated and, to some extent, unreliable.
The number of orphans living in some institution — the 8 million figure — has been floating around for decades. It seems to originate from a 1985 report by Defence for Children International.
A more recent tally by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) pins the number at 2 million, but UNICEF cautions that this is likely to be severely underestimated due to under reporting as “many institutions are unregistered, and many countries do not regularly collect and report data on children in institutional statistical studies than currently available, said Jedd Medefind, the president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans.
Most studies are conducted on a local level and “these numbers vary greatly by individual orphanage as well as by region of the world,” Medefind said.
UNICEF reports, for example, that 77% of more than 11,000 children in orphanages in Cambodia in 2009 had at least one living parent. In Sri Lanka, that number was 90% in 2007. On the low end, 39% of orphans in Zimbabwe had least one parent.
So what exactly is so troubling about having children with parents living in orphanages?
Decades of research show that children, especially younger children, placed in institutional care are more likely to experience poor health, developmental delay and emotional attachment disorders. So rather than supporting institutions that have poor track records, UNICEF and virtually all children’s rights groups favor helping destitute families and communities provide care.
While not all orphans can be returned to families or relatives, “we can say with confidence that a portion of the children currently living in orphanages could be returned to live with relatives with certain supports and appropriate