"The billions of dollars of international aid being pumped into Ukraine during the war should also be used to shut down orphanages, support families to care for their children and build a community that accepts disability," says Eric Rosenthal, Executive director of DRI.
Russia's War Creates Orphanage Crisis In Ukraine
More than 11 million people have fled Ukraine as a result of Russia's invasion. But many of most the vulnerable — mentally and physically disabled children — have been left behind.
United Nations, 15th session of Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
They gave us the children no one else wanted. No one wants something hard and difficult like this. They unloaded them from the train like dead bodies. - Director, Institution #1
Children who come here stay their whole life. This is their fate. There is no place else to go. This is a degradation of humanity. - Director, Institution #1
Your support is needed to protect children and adults with disabilities in Ukraine. Everyone is suffering. But babies, children, and adults with disabilities in group homes, orphanages and institutions are lost and forgotten. In this conflict, they are in grave danger of being abandoned by staff -- facing starvation and death. DRI is sounding the alarm to protect the lives of people most at-risk. Even before the war, Ukraine’s extensive network of orphanages left children without the love, care, and protection of family.
Immediate attention is needed to protect people with disabilities in Ukraine and ensure their full inclusion in international relief efforts. Disability Rights International (DRI) is especially concerned about 100,000 to 200,000 children segregated from society in the country’s orphanages.
Guatemala City, October 13, 2021 - Disability Rights International (DRI) published a report detailing how survivors of the fire and children who were detained at Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asuncion in Guatemala are still at risk. On March 7, 2017, boys and girls protested the physical and sexual abuse, rape and trafficking they suffered at the institution Virgen de la Asunción. As a punishment, the girls who had protested were locked in a tiny auditorium overnight. In the early hours of March 8, a fire broke out and forty-one girls died.
Around the world, millions of children grow up without a family in orphanages and residential care. Billions of dollars of charity funds from private US donors every year goes to support those programs. While there is extensive evidence that orphanage placement is dangerous for children, there is now a controversy at the United Nations as to whether small group home placement is an appropriate or necessary form of transition from orphanages to community inclusion.
At least 10 million children around the world grow up without the love and care of a family in orphanages, institutions and “residential care.” More than a billion dollars a year in development and charity money supports orphanages, residential care, and group homes.