"Do Romanians Love Their Children?"

"Do Romanians Love Their Children?"

by Ralu Filip

Copyright 2005 Editura Intact

Oh that you'd not be a child in Romania. If much of the world here in Romania, as well as numerous institutions are concerned about adults, among which are the media and others, it is with great difficulty that children manage to come to the attention of anyone. It seems that even criminals and other law breakers are better off. And much more. They have many more rights which are respected by institutions and NGOs.

Annually in Romania, thousands of children die who are just a few days old. Many of them would still be living today if 1.) They would not have been burned alive because they were locked in the house alone, 2.) They would not have drowned in the ditch in front of the house or in holes that were in the village. 3.) If they would not have been killed by the beating they received from their parents. 4.) If they had been taken to the doctor in time. 5.) If they hadn't been killed by incompetent doctors. 6.) If they hadn't been run over by a car whose driver was drunk or because of negligent parents who didn't supervise their children. 7.) If they hadn't been killed by the idiots who were allowed to roam free by prosecutors and police.

If somebody would have cared and would have removed the shards of glass from a broken window, a little girl would not have slit her throat while playing, and this happened at a camp for children. The waste of lives is frightening. Just as frightening is the uncaring attitude on the part of adults and particularly on the part of the government and those in it. In this context, the fact that basically all mass media continually follow Mutu, Becali, etc., is indecent.

Annually, hundreds of children disappear. Some of these prefer to be vagabonds and to live in the sewers of major cities. Others are forced to beg or to steal or to be prostitutes in other countries. If they don't die or don't flee from their homes, they are beaten and otherwise abused. The percentages are shocking.

School doesn't offer them much either. There they meet up with professors who aren't paid much, or who aren't prepared, or who are bored. Thousands of schools are substandard and are in fact in danger of falling down. Many have started the school year without hygienic authorization. Hygiene in the schools are a disaster, diseases are more and more frequent and especially hepatitis. How our children learn in such conditions is hard to understand. Perhaps for this reason hundreds of children quit school and others finish school but can barely read. And even here we are uncaring. Some newspapers have many Social Democrats (PSD) in positions of power and will have them there until Nicolae Vacaroiu and Adrian Nastase will be replaced as presidents of the Senate and House of Deputies respectively. Who will think about the children who have disappeared in recent years or about those who live in the sewers? Who cares about abandoned children, abused children, and those forced to beg? The recent scandal involving the secret recordings of PSD sessions are much more attractive than students quitting school or hepatitis.

For more than 15 years now, not one president of Romania has actively or seriously involved himself in the problem of the children. Not one government has had even one program which actually secured or helped protect the children. I have been involved as a consultant in the area of child protection. Consequently, I know somewhat the system. I know how it thinks and how it acts. I know what has been done. But more importantly, I know what needs to be done and has not been done. Under pressure from Baroness Nicholson, and later from the European Commission, Adrian Nastase and his government stopped international adoptions and attempted to intensify the removal of abandoned children from institutions. European officials were convinced that Romanian children were bought and sold. Without fully investigating the situation, they asked for the stoppage of international adoptions. I was among the few who drew attention to the negative effects which would come from this mistaken solution. I foresaw, as well, that this problem would come to the attention of the Helsinki Commission. The number of abandonments have not fallen. National adoption is, practically speaking, a very weak solution and has not absorbed even half of the children abandoned by their parents. Even more grave, these children have lost their fundamental right to have a family, that is to be adoptedby a foreign family. At the suggestion of some European big shots, some of these children were given, along with money, to the care of retirees and unemployed people in various villages in Romania. So, instead of going to school in New York, Madrid or Paris, they are required to care for the cows or in other actual situations abused or killed by these so called "maternal assistants".

It is interesting that the Ministry of Health knows and has announced that for years more and more children have been born with problems, with low birth weights, and generally smaller, much smaller than normal. He also knows how many children who are just a few days old, die every year. Even though this institution seems to know a lot, it doesn't accord the children any special attention. One of the best proofs of this is the lack of a national program for the maternity hospitals, the exact place where more and more children die.

The Ministry of Education is in the same situation. And what about the mayors? Many kindergartens, schools and hospitals are a disaster and substandard. Pollution as well as water from the tap seriously affect people's health. Parks are full of garbage and the children's playgrounds which are full of metal re-bar (the swings are made of it), put the children's lives in peril.

In fact, how much do we really love our children? What can we say about a country in which the true protection of children is cared about by very few, including by many parents? I say this, and I am aware that not a few people will become furious and indignant, it's because our problem is our heart. It's because we care so little.