An estimated 8 million to 10 million infants and children live in orphanages around the world, and aid agencies, churches and governments provide hundreds of millions of dollars in the hope that they can help vulnerable children find sanctuary in these institutions. This hope is badly misplaced. Orphanages are not safe places for children.

 

My organization, Disability Rights International, is working to dispel the widespread myth that building and filling an orphanage is a compassionate way to use charity or government money. In work in dozens of countries over two decades, we have witnessed thousands of children who live in disabling conditions, with heartbreaking consequences. We have seen neglected babies who rock back and forth, bite their hands and gouge their eyes as the result of mind-numbing boredom and neglect. We have seen infants and children, unable to feed themselves, left to starve because there is no one to feed them. In Romania and Turkey we found teens who weighed less than 30 pounds.