Opinion
By: Stephen Maughan
Conditions are certainly better for Romania’s orphans since the horrific discoveries following the Revolution, but there remains room for a whole lot more improvement
An orphan’s fate in Romania is often based on luck.
Few can forget the horrors of Romania’s orphanages of the early 1990s. Following the fall of the Ceausescu regime in December 1989 Romania, although newly liberated, became notorious for the appalling conditions within its state-run orphanages and institutions. The world was shocked by television and newspaper images of half-starved abandoned children chained to their beds. Aid agencies rushed to help and governments condemned what they saw, yet behind the scenes the children continued to suffer. A UNICEF report claimed that in 1990 86,000 children were in institutions, yet curiously by 1994 the numbers had increased to 98,000 children. Perhaps even more surprising is that in 2005 the figure had fallen to just over 80,000. All this despite an increase in international adoptions. (Between 1992-1994 about 10,000 Romanian children were adopted worldwide, according to a report for Toronto Life).
Officially, orphanages in Romania have all been closed; that was one of the conditions of joining the EU in 2007, which in turn followed a European Parliament report in 2001 criticising the country for its treatment of orphans. However, the question remains: what exactly has happened to all those children?
Stephen Maughan is a freelance journalist, recently graduated from Britain’s NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists). http://spmaughan.snappages.com
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