Protecting Russia’s Orphans

This article speculates on the specifics of the upcoming bilateral agreement between Russia and the US.

“The new agreement envisions not only the possibility of paying child support, but also other means of controlling the adoption process. For example, agencies involved in these matters will have to receive accreditation not only in the United States, but also in Russia. They will have to collect information about future adoptive parents and monitor the situation in the foreign family after the adoption. Finally, and most important of all, this agreement will apply retroactively and cover all adoptions of Russian children by American citizens in the last 16 years. ”

Statistics of Adoptees?

“Americans adopted some 60,000 Russian children. In the opinion of Astakhov, the actual number is substantially higher—around 100,000. In the mid-1990s, some 14,000 children left Russia for the United States every year. What’s more, this went on almost illegally. Various private agencies dealt directly with the heads of orphanages and for a stipulated reward “redeemed” this or that child. ”

A Reduction in Russian Orphans

“The number of orphans in Russia is also decreasing from year to year. In 2005 there were some 450,000, today that number has decreased to 370,000. This decrease is the result of two things: an overall drop in the Russian population, and the placement of orphans in adoptive or foster families in Russia. According to the Ministry of Education, around 9,000 children are adopted every year by Russian citizens. ”

Child Welfare Reform

“In the opinion of experts from the Ministry of Education, the number of orphans could be reduced through a special foster care system to help both poor families and adoptive parents. Today, the guardianship system has a mainly punitive function: It imposes fines on negligent parents, deprives them of their parental rights and puts their children in orphanages.

Positive examples of such services already exist in several regions of Russia, such as Tyumen. They help families in need find work or organize a small business. They offer these families financial subsidies as well as treatment for alcohol or drug dependence, if necessary. Most importantly, there is no talk of depriving these parents of their parental rights and putting their children in orphanages.

A draft law drawn up by the Ministry of Education would make such help mandatory. You would think that no one could object to a much needed law like that. But it has prompted real resistance. The problem, it turns out, is money. In recent years the oil-rich Russian government has spent large sums on orphans—over 6 billion rubles ($20,000,000) a year. To provide for a child in an orphanage officially costs between 45,000 and 65,000 rubles (from $1,500 to $2,000) a month. Yet there are few families in Russia that can afford to spend that much money on their own children. Needless to say, not all of that official money goes directly to the orphans. A substantial part of it goes to pay for all the various staff members in orphanages.[emphasis Rally] Boris Altshuler, head of the NGO Right of the Child and a member of the Public Chamber, is convinced that regional departments in charge of social welfare are opposing the draft law because they do not want to lose the vast sums allotted to them by the government. If fewer children are put in orphanages and increasingly placed in adoptive and foster families, then in time orphanages will disappear altogether. ”

Protecting Russia’s Orphans
[Russia Beyond the Headlines 4/13/11 by Svetlana Smetanina]

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