Dozens of orphanages in Cambodia, including some run by Australians,
have been accused of exploiting children to attract donations.
The government in Phnom Penh is cracking down on the booming
multimillion-dollar orphanage industry after investigators discovered
shocking abuses of children and a list has been compiled of centres
targeted for raids and closure.
Children in one orphanage told investigators how they were forced to
crawl while they were beaten with sticks and had to eat rice from the
ground as punishment for failing to recite Bible psalms, according to
SISHA, an anti-trafficking and exploitation organisation working with
government agencies in Phnom Penh.
Another orphanage offered children for local adoption to avoid laws
prohibiting foreign adoptions in the country, said SISHA's operations
director Eric Meldrum, a British former detective.
''They told me to go over there and choose which one I want,'' Mr Meldrum said.
Investigators say Australia has a greater involvement in Cambodia's
orphanages than any other nation through Australians running them
directly, volunteering or donating.
About 72 percent of the 10,000 children living in Cambodia's estimated
600 orphanages have a parent, although most are portrayed as orphans to
capitalise on the goodwill of foreign tourists and volunteers, including
thousands of Australians, research shows.
Up to 300 of these centres are operating illegally and flouting a push
by government and United Nations agencies for children to be reunited
with their parents.
The managers of several respected Australian-run orphanages are alarmed
by the situation and note that the number of orphanages has increased 65
percent in the past five years while the number of orphans has reduced
dramatically as Cambodia recovered from genocide, invasion and an AIDS
epidemic.
The largest Australian-run centres include Sunrise Children's Villages,
Hagar, Hope for Cambodian Children and Kampuchea House. Fairfax Media is
not suggesting any of these homes is being investigated.
One of the first orphanages investigated was the Love In Action centre,
an Australian-run orphanage in Phnom Penh, where there were allegations
of children being beaten and neglected.
The centre's 71-year-old founder, Ruth Golder, is under investigation
after 21 children were taken away from her centre in a raid on March 22.
She strongly denies any abuse took place.
The orphanage, which has links to the Christian Outreach Centre in
Australia, had operated illegally for years from donations from
Australians.
There is growing criticism in Cambodia and other developing countries
about so-called ''orphan tourism'' and ''volunteer tourism,'' where
thinly disguised businesses exploit both tourists and volunteers.
Visitors who have undergone no background checks can walk into dozens of
Cambodia's orphanages and be left alone with children who are being
described by child welfare workers as Cambodia's stolen generation.
Donors also take children away for outings - sometimes overnight - leaving them open to sexual abuse, investigators say.
In the Children's Umbrella Centre Organisation orphanage on the
outskirts of Phnom Penh, children were lined up last year and strangers
who had donated to the centre were invited to pick any before driving
away with four, investigators say.
The centre, which had an open sewer in a compound where children slept, has been closed.
While many orphanages are well run, enforce child protection policies
and have strict rules for visitors, almost all are largely unregulated
in a country where state institutions are weak and no qualifications are
required to set up an orphanage or children's centre.
On the streets of Siem Reap in north-western Cambodia, children playing
traditional instruments are led by men with signs declaring ''support
our orphans''. Anyone who donates is invited to visit nearby orphanages.
''We believe this is dangerous because the children are not orphans and
should not be there in the first place,'' said Sebastien Marot,
executive director of Friends-International, a non-government
organisation conducting a campaign to warn tourists and volunteers that
children are not tourist attractions.
Mr Meldrum said unscrupulous orphanage operators had adopted a business
model where the centres got more money from international donors if they
had more children.
He said orphanage recruiters would approach poor, often rural, families
promising the centre could offer their children education, food,
clothing and a chance for a better life.
''There are many reports of cash transactions for the child, though it
is usually referred to as a donation to the family,'' he said.
Several international studies have found that children should be living
in their communities with family members, relatives or foster families
except in extreme circumstances.
A study by Save the Children found that institutional care should only
be used for children as a ''last resort and only then if it is of a high
standard and in the best interests of the individual child''.
Studies also show that in most orphanages children are taught a foreign
language, religion and Western culture that leaves them struggling to
cope in Cambodia's Buddhist community when they are eventually released,
often when they turn 18.
Mr Marot said Cambodia was particularly vulnerable ''because it is
suffering from the victim syndrome where everyone thinks the country is
still coming out of war. Everyone comes here with this attitude towards
Cambodia as this victimised country where all the children are in
miserable and horrible situations, which is not the case any more.''
But Geraldine Cox, who runs two Sunrise Children's Villages in Cambodia,
said while the Friends' campaign had merit it ''does not take into
account the many orphanage centres which are well run and rely on visits
by tourists to survive''.
She said visitors should be discouraged from visiting centres where
receipts for donations are not given, photo identifications are not
requested and where a visitor cannot see annual financial reports.
American missionary Cathleen Jones came to Cambodia 20 years ago to run
an orphanage with 120 children but soon ''started realising these kids
had parents and families and they wanted to be with them.''
Now her Children In Families organisation works to find Cambodian homes
for children through kinship or permanent and long-term foster care for
children who cannot be reunited with their parents.
''If there is no imminent danger to the child he or she should not be
removed, even if the family is dysfunctional,'' Ms Jones said, adding
that many orphanages refused to release children once they were in their
care even if a family environment was available. ''They are kept for
years,'' she said.
Mr Marot said the people who ran some orphanages ''keep the kids looking
poor . . . badly dressed in order to attract sympathy from you in order
to get your money.''
''It's a lucrative business. The children are the assets,'' he said.
Volunteer placement organisations promote volunteer tourism as a way for
travellers to ''make a difference'' and have experiences that are
''life changing and rewarding''.
Volunteers pay several thousand dollars for a two-week visit, while some
stay many months. But Mr Marot said visitors were doing things with
children at the centres that were banned in their own countries.
''Imagine if a busload of Chinese turned up at a school in Australia,
played with the children, spoke to them in Chinese, pushed them to eat
rice and fish and took photographs with them and splashed them all over
Facebook?'' Mr Marot said.
''The parents would go berserk.''
Cambodian government agencies, including the Ministry of Social Affairs,
and SISHA late last year set up a committee to identify, investigate
and close harmful unregistered orphanages, while adopting guidelines for
standards of residential care in registered centres that are comparable
with those in Western countries.
They have compiled a list of centres they plan to raid and close.
Jenny McAuley, chairwoman of Hope for Cambodian Children Foundation,
which runs an orphanage in Battambang province for AIDS-affected
children, welcomed the government's crackdown on unregistered orphanages
and the push to return children to their parents, saying it ''rightly
articulates that the best place for children to grow up is in their
families and local communities''.
Ms McAuley, who has worked in children protection for 30 years, said it
was ''quite arrogant for people from a developed country to go to a
developing country and set up a service without reference to the
government about what they are doing''.
''I think government agencies are quite right to be annoyed about it . . . It's a form of colonisation,'' she said.
May, 21, who sells books to tourists on Phnom Penh's riverfront, spent four years in a centre for abused children in the city.
She said it was good - she learnt to speak a little English - but
conditions were strict and she was allowed to visit to her parents only
about twice a year.
''They told my parents I would be away for a year, but I stayed four
years, until I was 19,'' she said. ''I was very sad for all that time,
because I missed my family.''
Write by Khmer 2days
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