On the wall of an orphanage in Venice, a musicologist encountered a fresco featuring an aria written for an opera. She’s since embarked on a project to bring this forgotten music back.
Some children of HIV-positive parents drop out of school to look after their mothers and fathers. Others skip class to earn cash for the family by selling goods.
The success of the Ugandan dance troupe offers a chance to discuss the harms of institutional care.
A handwritten note painted on the site of a mass grave of up to 800 children on the site of the former Mother and Baby home in Tuam, Ireland, June 2014.
Aidan Crawley/EPA
Governments in West Africa and international aid agencies should help facilitate adoptions locally and provide better health care and education to support entire communities.
‘Millions of children in overseas orphanages … would dearly love to have parents’, claims Tony Abbott, and his government is making intercountry adoption easier.
Screenshot/Intercountry Adoption Australia
Most of the world’s ‘orphans’ are not orphans at all and many are caught up in a global trade in meeting demand for adoption. Making intercountry adoption easier adds to the risks for these children.
In the wake of the Nepal earthquake it’s important people don’t rush in to “rescue” kids who might not in fact be orphaned.
AAP
Following the earthquake in 2010, people flocked to Haiti to “rescue” orphaned and lost children. The problem that has since emerged is that many of the “orphans” placed in orphanages and sent for adoption, were not orphaned at all.
The number of orphanages in developing nations has dramatically increased in the past decade, driven by a fraudulent trade in ‘paper orphans’.
IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation
Researcher in Economics, Health and Governance, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, United Nations University