Hopeland’s Co-Founder and CEO, Nicholas Evans, has been following up on our successful efforts to pass a resolution on orphanage trafficking at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) by spreading the word on how we can work together to achieve our goals.
His latest Op-Ed on this subject was recently published in The Imprint, an online daily news outlet focused on the nation’s child welfare and youth justice systems.
In his article Evans shares the message that there is “an alarming connection between residential care facilities, such as orphanages and children’s homes, and human trafficking.”
The problem, Evans continues is “that of the millions of children living in orphanages around the world, research shows that in many countries, the vast majority have a mother or father who is alive. Poverty, not orphanhood, is the most common driving factor leading parents to place their children in orphanages.” It is this reality, along with the billions of dollars in donations every year from the U.S. alone that causes the practice of orphanage trafficking to live on.
There is a solution to this crisis, however, Evans argues in the article, “Shifting support from residential models of care to strengthening families and supporting family-based models of care is a realistic solution. Family-centered support allows parents the opportunity to care well for their children, ensures better outcomes for their development, and avoids contributing to the problem of orphanage trafficking.
“Decades of research have found that, compared to children in residential facilities, children in families, even poor families, develop better. Children who spend time in orphanages don’t develop the way their peers raised in families do, and they also often struggle later in life. Family provides the love, belonging and identity children need to thrive into adulthood.”
Hopeland is taking action by supporting international efforts to outlaw orphanage trafficking. “In 2019, every member country of the United Nations General Assembly publicly committed to ending the institutionalization of children and, in a historic resolution, pledged to prioritize family-based care in their countries”, Evans reminds us.
Now with another historic resolution passed, this time at the IPU, we are encouraged that action is being taken by the global community.
You can read Nicholas’ article in full here.
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