US Policy Promotes Institutionalization of Children in Romania
October 1999
By Victor Groza
After Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed on December 25, l989, the world was
shocked to learn the tragic outcome of his social policies aimed at stimulating population growth.
An estimated 100,000 children were found warehoused amid unbelievable squalor and deprivation in
hundreds of institutions nationwide.
By 1992, the number of institutionalized children had dropped to 73,000, thanks largely to the
wave of international adoptions that followed the revolution. By l994, however, the number was back
up to more than 98,000. Desperately poor women continue to abandon their children, and the
nation's recent economic crisis has led to a dramatic increase in abandonments.
Despite the efforts of countless individuals and humanitarian relief organizations that flocked
to Romania after the revolution, conditions inside these institutions are again in decline.
Food and medical supplies were reported to be desperately low this summer, and, as in the early
1990s, children were starving to death.
One underlying problem was the public finance law of October, 1998, which transferred all
responsibility for orphanages and institutions to local government. As the child welfare
system was decentralized, there was little or no effort to provide funding or technical assistance
to assist communities with this transition. In some locales, orphanages received no food whatsoever
from the state and have been subsisting on whatever nongovernmental organizations can scrounge
together for them. Staff layoffs, nonpayment of staff, and lower than projected tax revenues have
made conditions even worse.
Unfortunately, the United States' response has been an infusion of money to keep the
institutions going. According to the October 1, 1999
Romanian Business Journal, U.S. Ambassador to Romania Jim Rosapepe and Denny Robertson,
director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), signed an accord to give $14
million for the immediate needs of institutionalized children.
Instead of using the crisis to insist on reform, the U.S. government is perpetuating the archaic
system of institutions for children. After almost 10 years of foreign assistance, the child
welfare system remains underdeveloped. There are less than 1500 foster families in Romania.
Domestic adoption has increased, but in 1998 only about 1100 Romanian families adopted
orphaned children. International adoptions have trickled to 500-600 children per year.
Ten years, millions of dollars, millions of hours of volunteer time from around the world,
and Romania continues—with U.S. support—to institutionalize her children.
The RBJ article claims that the institutions are "foster houses," but nothing can be further
then the truth. These large and small warehouses, while physically better than they were in
1989-90, are still no place to call home.
Relationships between adults and children are superficial and brief, with little or no warmth or
affection. Institutional staff do not connect emotionally or physically the way families
connect with children. At minimum, the regimentation of institutional life does not provide
children with the type or quality of experiences they need to be healthy, happy, fully functioning
adults. Long before children suffer a physical death, there is the spiritual, emotional and
developmental death that occurs when they are not loved, nourished, cherished, or cared for by a
family. For those who live, the negative effects of institutionalization may well last
a lifetime.
The U.S. should not continue to bail out the failing child welfare system but use its money and
power to assure that Romania has the political will to stop the damage to these innocent babies and
children. One need only talk to those who volunteer in these places of purgatory or visit
the unmarked graves next to the worst institutions, to know that throwing more money at them doesn't
solve the problem.
The $14 million could be better used to support the struggling private, nongovernmental sector
in Romania—p articularly those programs that offer prevention and community-based alternatives to
institutionalization such as family foster care, domestic adoption, and small group care. While
some USAID funding goes to these areas, it is not enough given the enormity of the problem.
Romania's human rights record with children, gypsies, the minority Hungarian population, and
homosexuals highlights the deep-rooted difficulties in transitioning to a market economy and
democratic system. If anything, the $14 million just reinforces business as usual.
Instead of building bridges for Romanian children to the community, we are cementing them
inside walls of pain and destruction. Change for the better remains elusive. And the
children continue to suffer.
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