Orphanages in Nepal suffer from ban on foreign adoptions

By Priya Sridhar, RT, Kathmandu, Nepal. - Today 15 year old Chinmohan Chaudhary is all smiles but it wasn’t that long ago that the teenager was living in an illegal orphanage in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

SOUNDBITE: Chinmohan Chaundary, orphan:
“The homes would be given rations for the children but the caretakers would take half the food for themselves while giving us only a small portion of it. They would also get drunk and would beat us.”

Chinmohan is now living in a home run by the Umbrella Foundation – an Irish NGO working with Nepal’s government to keep track of Kathmandu’s estimated 15,000 children living in orphanages.

Investigations have uncovered that around 80 percent of these kids actually have parents. Often families living in rural parts of Nepal will sell their children to traffickers who they believe will give them a better life.

SOUNDBITE: Shane Cogan, Umbrella Foundation:
“You have a trafficker who goes to a village and says to very poor people, people who have high illiteracy, no education, and they are told ‘if you give us your children you will receive a small amount of money from an international family or individual.’ In return we will bring them to Katmandu where they will get an excellent education.”

Traffickers are known to buy a Nepali child for around 15 dollars and then sell them to orphanages that are not monitored by the government.

They are then sold on for up to 25,000 dollars to families from abroad.

While they’re living in the orphanages, many of the children are reportedly abused and forced to work, and some are even sexually assaulted.

SOUNDBITE: Chinmohan Chaundary, orphan:
“We were forced to work in the field. We would be woken up early every morning to clean the house and also take care of the caretakers’ infant child.”

The Nepali government admitted that almost half of the country’s orphanages were involved in illegal international adoptions but since then things have changed.

PTC:
“Nepal has now banned international adoption. While child advocates say this will help prevent trafficking of children, organizers of orphanages are worried about how to keep their facilities running without money from abroad.”

Ramesh Bhomi works for Nepal Children’s Organization which runs eleven legal orphanages across the country. He says that before the ban on international adoption his orphanage in Kathmandu made 5,000 dollars for every child that got adopted by a foreign family.

SOUNDBITE: Ramesh Bhomi Nepal’s Children Organization:
“It has been difficult for us to run the homes after the suspension of international adoption because we still have to provide for the daily necessities of every child in the home and take care of their medical bills too.”

Today many orphanages are trying to reunite trafficked children with their families but many like Chinmohan barely remember their real siblings and parents anymore.