I have worked as a Project Coordinator at Child Haven International's Nepal office for the past 16 years. Child Haven International cares for single or double orphans by supporting various children's homes. It has cared for more than 1,300 children in Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Tibet.I used to receive a lot of request letters to enroll children in our homes, and if this was not possible, to provide them food and education. Not only Child Haven, most other orphanages get requests to admit orphans or vulnerable children. I tried my best to determine the distribution of orphans in different geographic areas but only managed to find a list of orphanages from Central Child Welfare Board in Lalitpur. There were no evidence-based studies on orphans and vulnerable children at household level, even though UNICEF estimates about seven percent children were orphaned in Nepal in 2004.
Since I could find no information on regional distribution, I decided to undertake the study myself. Here are my findings.
Orphanhood is a big social and public health problem, especially in developing countries with few social support programs. Asia and Africa have high number of orphans, but Africa's orphans are disproportionately caused by HIV/AIDS. The definition of orphan was changed in Africa after the mid-nineties to accommodate HIV/AIDS affected children. UNICEF redefined orphans to include a child whose situation drastically changes due to death of one parent. When children lose support of one parent, they have less access to basic needs, including proper nutrition, health care, clothing, safe shelter and education. These vulnerable children are unlikely to have their basic needs for normal childhood met.
Findings show that such children often become involved in illegal activities for survival because they have no other options. As there is no social security for orphans and less advantaged children (except for widowed mother), or for physically challenged parents, children get only small monthly grants. This is not even enough to buy milk for orphan babies.
According to Central Child Welfare Board (2015), 16,400 single or double orphans reside in more than 570 orphanages in Nepal. Many orphans are dependent on grade "C" and "D" category orphanages where only limited basic needs are met. According to Social Welfare Council, there are 27 International NGOs working in Nepal for children's welfare; 22 INGOs work in education sector. There is no statistics of how many orphan children these INGOs support.
A number of organizations and individuals are working for children's welfare but they cater to the need of only small number of orphans. Thus evidence-based studies are needed; working strategies need to be devised so that disadvantaged children get assistance even if they are staying with their families. These non-institutionalized 'orphans' will lead normal lives after a few years.
There are 11,084,311 children aged 0-17 years in Nepal according to 2011 census. Of them 5.3 percent are orphans. However, age and sub-regional stratified results show different picture. Significantly high number (seven percent) of orphans is found in western mountain sub-region followed by seven percent in eastern Tarai sub-region. Significantly lower proportion of orphans is found in central hill sub-region (1.1 percent) compared to overall (5.3 percent).
Demographic and health survey data in western mountain sub-region deal with Manang, Mustang, Dolpa, Mugu, Jumla, Humla, Kalikot, Bajura, Bhajhang and Darchula. The data in eastern Tarai includes Jhapa, Morang, Sunsari, Saptari and Siraha. We found in these places that the likelihood of being orphan increased with age. For example there are 1.4 percent orphan children aged 0-4, 3.8 percent aged 4-9, 7.7 percent aged 10-14 and 9.9 percent aged 15-17.
In all, there are 610,539 orphan children in Nepal. The numbers are significantly higher in central Tarai (119,716) than in eastern Tarai (104,475) and eastern mountain (6,655) sub-regions.
Our conclusion is that government needs to establish a means of supporting orphans in family setting itself. It should focus on both high risk areas and areas where absolute number of orphans is high. In addition, programs should be launched to reduce risk in high-risk areas as well as to reduce the number of new orphans in more populated areas.
The author holds a PhD in social science from Prince of Songkla University, Thailand
arjunmg@gmail.com
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