Eighty kilometres’ (50 miles’) drive outside St Petersburg’s elegant city centre is a settlement that had gone back in time. “Russkaya Amerika” is what the locals call it. The reality could not be more different: a two-storey wooden house with a rusty portrait of Lenin still pinned to it. Read More
Forty per cent of orphan graduates turn to crime, 40% become drug addicts and 10% commit suicide or simply “disappear” within the first year of independence, according to the Russian NGO, Big Changes. Only 2% enter university, compared with 45% of children raised in families. Read More
The rise of AIDS and drugs has seen the plight of children in Russia deteriorate sharply over the decade since the collapse of communism, a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official said Thursday. “Children in Russia face an acute crisis,” Rosemary McCreery, UNICEF representative for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, told a press conference. Their situation “is now worse than 10 years ago in nearly all cases,” she said. Read More
The authors argue that the true scale of the trade in children is better reflected in the statistics for the numbers of children reported missing. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 20,295 children were reported missing in 2000 (up 17 percent from 1999), including 7,154 young children. Procuracy officials estimate the total number of children who have “disappeared” at about 300,000. Read More
Human Rights Watch found the Russian orphanage system condemns children “to a life of deprivation and cruelty.” More than 200,000 children are classified as being “without parental care” and placed in orphanages, though as many as 95 percent of them still have a living parent, the organization concluded. Read More
This literature will determine what major factors influence a child’s response to death and to understand how children react to the death of a parent at different developmental stages. Read More
The number of foreign children adopted by Americans fell 12 percent in the past year, reaching the lowest level since 1999 as some countries clamped down on the process and others battled with allegations of adoption fraud. Read More
Moscow, Russia (CNN) — Though Oksana is 4 years old, she is much shorter than other children who are a year younger. She barely talks, and yet doesn’t hesitate to climb up in her puffy dress to sit next to a visitor on a couch, after flashing an impish smile.
Administrators at Children’s Home Number 59 in Moscow say Oksana was found by police, after apparently being abandoned. She was then delivered to a hospital and eventually ended up at this orphanage.
Of the more than 83 children registered here, Oksana stands the best chance of being adopted — simply because she is one of the youngest children here.
Darya Tatarenko is a young child psychologist who works at Children’s Home Number 59. The 22-year-old graduate of Moscow State University has a deep personal interest in adoption: one of her sisters was adopted.
Abortion has become the birth control of choice; a choice made because of circumstances. Birth control is available in Russia, but it is expensive, whereas abortions are free. The overall health of Russia is poor. With as much as 20 percent of young women suffering from anemia, many choose abortion because they fear that they and/or their baby will not survive a full term pregnancy. Read More