NEPAL, CAMBODIA, CHINA & INDONESIA
Case Study
In Nepal, 19 children were rescued from an orphanage in which they had been deprived of regular meals, had to share cramped accommodation and did not receive any education. The orphanage owner told these children’s parents that the children would be attending a prestigious boarding school. Parents were asked to contribute to the school fees and told that the remainder would be funded through donations. The orphanage owner and staff were arrested and the parents reunited with their children.
In Cambodia, orphanage trafficking is widespread and well documented. Some orphanage owners purchase vulnerable children from disadvantaged families. These children are then deprived of food and are kept in poor living conditions to attract prospective donations from volunteers and charity organisations. The children are also at risk of being trafficked out of the orphanages for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude.
In Indonesia, poverty and a lack of accessible welfare services mean that the most vulnerable families still depend on charitable support. Children from low-income families or children living in remote regions can be placed in institutions as part of a child protection response which is based around orphanages. Furthermore, social workers are often under pressure to fill all the available vacancies at orphanages. Some social workers are quoted as saying “we do outreach every year to fill the vacancies. We even go to villages to advertise our open recruitment”.