Rowett arranged funds through foreign donors from Slovakia, Japan, and Germany but didn’t have the slightest clue about its misuse. The sponsors are now after the proprietor who has 65 children living under his care.[break]
Through volunteers and teachers at the orphanage, evidences regarding how the children were suffering from repetitive beatings, sexual abuse, and neglect in their health, education and overall well being slowly started to surface. Even though eight children have narrated behind the scene accounts of abuse to Central Child Welfare Board (CCWB), Rowett says the case hasn’t progressed much. “The proprietor also admitted of misbehaving with the children in front of CCWB but later denied it,” he says.
Photo Courtesy: Jonathan Rowet
The situation is extremely critical, he explains as the parents have been denied access to their children currently residing at Happy Home. With volunteers support, Rowett has managed to get 11 children out of the orphanage. But many are reported missing.
“We found out that the children were made to cook, do house hold chores at odd hours, were deprived of food, sometimes made to eat from dustbin along with endless list of other torments,” says Rowett adding that he is concerned about the abuse rather than the misuse of funds.
“We’ve cancelled the funds and are trying to spread the word but all we’ve received so far from CCWB is a list of directives for the proprietors to follow,” he says.
The orphanage is also running Happy Home International School within the orphanage premises with four children in each class. Kishor Kunwar, who volunteered as a teacher for nine months says that though the students were initially reluctant, they finally shared their stories of abuse.
“They were being forced to eat insect infested food and rotten vegetables,” says Kunwar.
14-year-old Nima Tamang* (name changed) who was recently rescued from Happy Home mentions that her life there was really sad. “We weren’t allowed to go home and had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to do chores. We were restricted from even talking to volunteers.”
Rajesh Sharma, member of Child Protection Committee, Lalitpur who is investigating the case of Happy Home informs that the “Standards for Operation and Management of Residential Child Care Homes 2012” which was reformed last year under the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare has set a criteria to open an orphanage – The numbers of caretakers should match the number of kids.
“Happy Home, in the legal sense, is neither a school nor a hostel. If it was a school it should have been registered under District Education Office. It has been registered as an NGO but you can’t run an orphanage like that,” says Sharma.
Many orphanages run as a lucrative business says Sharma adding that children are made to appear as orphans in legal papers by creating fake ID’s to lure the sponsors.
He adds that for orphans to increase there should be issues of conflicts and natural disasters but private orphanages are increasing at such a rate that it doesn’t justify the need. “The question is do we really need so many orphanages because if it questions the security of the children then it should be critically investigated.”
According to Ram Bahadur Chand, Officer of Central Child Welfare Board (CCWB), there are 767 orphanages in Nepal out of which 571 orphanages are in Kathmandu Valley. Since last July, CCWB has monitored more than 70 orphanages in the capital and many fail to meet the required standard.
He informs that the basic guideline to open a residential orphanage is the ability to look after at least ten children by providing basis rights to education, health, entertainment and right to live in a well maintained environment. According to the Children’s Act 1992, the orphanages should be able to submit personal file of health and academic report of each child to the District Child Welfare Committee.
“Many people including the orphanage owners are unaware about child rights,” he says.
The underlying issue Chand points out is lack of coordination, orientation and awareness with the growing number of orphanages that work without proper approval from the government. The foreign volunteer’s need permission letter from the government of Nepal and District level office should also grant permission but there seems to be severe lapse in this matter.
“There is conflict between the sponsors and the proprietors in Happy Home’s case but our main concern is to work for rights of the children,” says Chand. “We have made a report with 17 guidelines for the proprietor to improve the condition of his orphanage and if the guidelines aren’t followed immediately then further action will be taken.”
Laxmi Prasad Tripathi, Under Secretary of Ministry of Women, Child and Social Welfare says that the formulation of new standard has brought hope that its implementation will help to reform the system and complications of orphanage operation in the country.
“The donors directly approach the orphanages bypassing the government which leads to mismanagement of funds when they should actually channelize the money through CCWB for accountability,” says Tripathi.
Considering the case of Happy Home and growing number of profit based orphanages, Tripathi mentions that the policies need to be strictly implemented. One of the best ways to systemize orphanages he says would be by initiating Public Private Partnership so that the government can coordinate with various NGOs. The issue he says is not about the lack of resources for the private organizations as lots of sponsors are pouring in but it is about honesty, commitment and proper coordination from the concerned sectors.
He mentions that the standards for operation of child care homes have been reformed on the basis of the National Child Policy 2012 that incorporates four main subjects of child rights which include survival, protection, development and participation. “If we can incorporate and put all the subjects into practice then only can child rights can be secured,” he says.
Through Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the ministry plans to implement the policy and directives of alternative care in future. The guideline of CRC alternative care which has been approved by United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has been adopted in the Child Act policy of Nepal. The National Plan of Action (NPA) for children which is a 10 years plan also incorporates the concept of alternative care.
“The problem is that the last resort has been our first option. Many parents have been admitting their children in orphanages so we need to raise awareness regarding importance of family environment so that it further regulates growing number of private orphanages.”
The alternative care policy demands for orphanages to be used only as the last resort. The first priority for the orphans will be kinship care where guardians of blood relation take the child under shelter. The second option is foster care; the third is inter country adoption followed by outside country adoption with institutional care as the last option
“Institutional care cannot be compared with the kind of upbringing that’s possible in natural family environment so the first priority should goes to guardianship,” says Tripathi.
CCWB also agrees that the monitoring of orphanages through the regulated standards will help improve the deteriorating condition of orphanages in the valley. Sharma of Child Protection Committee, on the other hand, adds that it has become vital for CCWB to investigate with utmost care.
“It is however illegal on the CCWB’s part to give directives to the accused owner of Happy Home as it hasn’t been registered as an orphanage in the first place. It should first ask the owner to register the orphanage and then take action against them,” says Sharma.
Rowett believes that the situation demands a better legal action for the accused as the report by CCWB does not clearly mentions the issue of abuse. With lack of proper evidence and report provided by CCWB on the Happy Home case, Rowett is working on taking the case further through the help of a lawyer and is determined to rescue the kids.
Government’s Take
The Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare works closely with CCWB to protect the rights of children and has witnessed a lot of cases of mismanaged private orphanages in the country during its monitoring procedures. With the reformed Standards for Operation and Management of Residential Child Care Homes, 2012, the government is hopeful that its implementation will help improve the condition of orphanages in the country.
The Week met up with Upendra Prasad Adhikary, Joint-Secretary of Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare to talk about the condition of orphanages in the country.
What are the basic guidelines to run an orphanage?
There’s a limited guideline that has been mentioned in our reformed policy of Standards for Operation to run an orphanage in the country. Every guideline in the Standard has a list of laws that needs to be taken into consideration. The admission procedure, residential care facilities, infrastructure, protection of child rights are some of the issues that have been incorporated in the policy.
How has the government supported orphans of the country?
There are four orphanages run by the government in Biratnagar, Rajbiraj, Birgunj and Butwal with 27 orphans in each orphanage. There are a lot of private orphanages that are running in the country so they also have taken the lead to take care of underprivileged children that the government is unable to support at the moment due to lack of proper resources. We’ve been monitoring the issues of misconduct at orphanages by researching with CCWB as child rights issues have always been our priority. With the recent implementation of new standard, we’re positive about brining reforms in the issues of orphanages.
What are the basic challenges that the ministry is facing regarding government orphanage centers?
Besides the issues of misconduct on the private orphanages part, there are lots of challenges regarding government orphanages in the country. We haven’t been able to open child care homes in all districts. The second challenge is that we can only keep limited number of orphans in our child care homes but there are lots of orphans and we haven’t been able to look after them. Moreover, we don’t have child care homes in Far Western and Mid Western regions. We also need to improve the environment of child care centers and the budget constraint is the main hindrance in that matter.
With lots of private organizations coming up, what is the government planning to do to monitor them?
In the future, the government plans to give utmost priority to Child Protection as this has been our main concern. Providing quality and standard living to children will be the main focus. We hear of mismanagement of funds by the orphanage owners and mistreatment of children so we really need to investigate deeply on such critical issues. The CCWB has been monitoring the orphanages in the valley and if there are cases of mistreatment then it takes legal action. Our biggest challenge is to monitor the orphanages that have been operating illegally. The main issue right now is that orphanages are failing to follow the guidelines so we need to better our monitoring system.
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