Armenian Orphans in the 21st Century: International Recommendations and 21st Century Solutions

Since time immemorial, people have migrated for scores of reasons.  Some leave home fleeing conflict and violence, to escape religious persecution or ethnic tensions, poverty, political or economic instability, or to start over after environmental disaster.  Unfavorable conditions that push people from their homes are called “push factors.”  Conditions that attract people to a place, like the promise of job opportunities, health care, education, or freedoms of any sort are called “pull factors.”  In international parlance, push and pull factors attempt to explain why people will risk everything to move great distances from their homeland

Today unprecedented numbers of people are on the move worldwide.  Ongoing wars and conflicts, as well as Climate Change and its effects have decimated many of the societal safety nets that once existed, and split apart families, communities, and countries.  Documented by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in 2017, “we now have the highest levels of displacement on record…65.6 million people around the world have been forced from home.  Among them are nearly 22.5 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.”[1]  Refugees, displaced and dispossessed peoples, and abandoned children, the UNHCR has said, are obvious symptoms of a deeply fractured humanity.

Consequently, the concept of “nationality” is becoming less defined by geographic borders, and more by self-identification.  For people who are part of a forced dispersion, or a diaspora, for those of hybridized or hyphenated ethnicities and nationalities due to immigration, it’s not uncommon for those persons to relate themselves to a homeland of heritage, in addition to, or instead of, their host country.  A homeland of heritage can provide a feeling of emotional groundedness, offering some semblance of history, identity, and belonging amid the chaos of displacement and relocation.  Oftentimes, irrespective of when or if their parents, grandparents, or they themselves ever lived in that homeland, that land—however distant or dreamlike—provides a sense of who one is.  Such identification and relatedness can also build rich and robust diasporas.  

 

Perhaps like many diasporic, hyphenated Armenians—that is, descendants of Genocide-era Armenians living in the West—I grew up hearing about “the old country.”  When I was very young, my grandfather used to say that his old country had no name, that it had been stripped down to nothing.  He’d loosely refer to it as an ancient, rocky place, borne of Asia Minor.  Or sometimes it was referred to as the Near East, a place identified as the cradle of civilization.  It would be years until he’d actually call this place “Armenia.”  The exact year was 1991, the year of Armenia’s independence from the Soviet Union.  Getsa Haysastan!  Long live Armenia!

 

Spending my early years in my grandfather’s U.S. East Coast home, I learned about a group of special children: Armenian orphans.  A common admonishment at mealtimes was to “eat your food—the Armenian orphans are starving!”  My grandfather kept photos of some of these special children on his desk at work; and so I became aware of the children he sponsored through various diasporic organizations.  Historically, the Armenian diaspora has gone to great lengths to support its own, thus, orphan sponsorship is a fairly common practice.  As an adult, I, like many others, have followed suit.  It’s a practice of legacy, if you will.

According to the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF),there are around 4,500 children in state residential orphanages in Armenia; and in spite of the decrease in Armenia’s child population and lowering birth rates, the number of institutionalized children has remained relatively consistent over time.[2] 

Recently a journalist friend asked, “Why, more than 100 years after the Genocide, are there still so many Armenian orphans, and why aren’t they adopted?”  Her questions begged pause for research.  Today most Armenian orphans are “social orphans,” and most of them are in Armenia, though there are still some Armenian orphanages in the Middle East.  These “social orphans” are different from the “natural orphans” of last century.  “Natural orphans” are children without living parents, and as the diaspora well knows, were resultant of the Genocide.  “Social orphans,” or “socioeconomic orphans” as they are sometimes referred, are children with at least one living parent, but whose parent has surrendered custody to the state or otherwise ended their role and rights as parent, or state intervention has removed the child from the family of origin. 

 

The latter usually comes from situations where the family has not been able to meet the child’s basic human needs, such as nutrition, health care, clothing, education, and safe shelter.  Generally, these children are institutionalized under the assumption that the state can better provide for the child’s needs than his or her own family.  According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, Armenia, one third of the Armenian population lives in poverty, many in inadequate housing, verging on homelessness.  Public funding for poor families is insufficient, which is why, compounded with familial and social pressures, many parents, seeing no other option will relinquish their children to state care.  

 

Though Armenia’s current orphan crisis push and pull factors are different from last century’s, similarities exist:  the family and society continue to experience disruptions.  Perhaps not by genocide, but psyches have been fractured, and hearts broken.  Last century’s interruption—the enormous fracture of genocide—is obvious.  Children were left parentless; thus launching the crisis of natural orphans.  The interruptions and fractures of natural disaster have been obvious too, by which I mean that created by the 1988 Spitak (city in the northern province of Lori) earthquake that killed approximately 25,000 Armenians, rendered approximately half a million homeless, and left in its wake, more natural orphans. 

 

Necessary to the contemporary examination of fractures related to orphaned and abandoned children, Armenia of East and West forms the framework.  In essence, Armenia’s orphans have come about in waves:  (1) the Genocide era, which produced more natural orphans, and (2) the post-Soviet era, which produced more social orphans.  Arguably, there could be another wave interjected between one and two to include the Soviet-era Spitak earthquake disaster.  This paper will concentrate on the children of Armenia of the East.   

 

The fracturing has continued via the geographic split between Armenia proper and the diaspora.  The effects of which are seen in the politics of international Genocide recognition, Turkish denial of the Genocide, geopolitics, the on-off conflict in Nagorno-Karabagh, the complicated diplomatic relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan and resultant blockades against Armenia, and within the nation’s still-transitioning market and government.  In tenuous circumstances such as these, it’s children who most easily fall through the cracks.  In fact, children are always among the most vulnerable and hardest hit during any sort of crisis.  For this reason, the diaspora and government of Armenia have done what they can to provide safety nets of which state institutional care, to date, has been foremost.

 

With Genocide-era orphans as the backdrop, the Armenian orphan crisis is protracted, vast, and complex.  The relationship between orphans of yesteryear and today are both oriented in the aftermath of separation—whether by crimes against humanity, environmental devastation, or economic failures.  In American University of Armenia lecturer and journalist, Maria Titizian’s report entitled, “Independence Generation: Perceptions of family and marriage,” Titizian states that “the Armenian family is one of the most important social constructs and institutions in Armenian society.  It has been and continues to be patriarchal in structure, multigenerational, and at the center of social life.”  She goes on to say that “[t]hrough centuries of foreign domination, the absence of statehood and the 1915 Armenian Genocide that ruptured the nation, it was the family unit that maintained Armenian culture, identity, traditions, and belonging.” 

 

And yet families and communities, due to the aforementioned push-pull factors, have been split apart, disinherited, and/or rearranged.  Says Titizian, “[The family] has banded together against foreign or external threats, it has been the crucible of identity, national values, belonging, etc., it has served the nation in times of upheaval, genocide.”  I would add that family built the diaspora.  “However, as the world is living in the Fourth Industrial Revolution with potential disruptions to the labor market, as ability of movement has increased over the last century, as labor migration has increased since independence [in 1991] ripping families apart, as the Internet has given the youth access to other global trends and values, as younger women become more empowered and begin to balk at rigid gender roles, the nature and construction of the family [is changing]…While maintaining the virtue, value and importance of the Armenian family in society, it must be done without ignoring issues of conflict and abuse that exist in families, the prevailing and persisting gender inequality and be accepting of diversity and the potentially different forms of family (nuclear, multi-generational, single-parent). Armenian society needs to acknowledge the challenges that face families—from the economic to the emotional—and find ways to address them to create the conditions necessary for healthy, harmonious and stable family life.”[3] 

 

 

The consequences of this crisis are not only the lack of basic human needs and family breakdown, but at this point in history, more and more children are vulnerable to “trafficking,” a commoditizing of humans and modern form of slavery.  Human trafficking is a rapidly growing criminal operation on par with arms smuggling, and second only to drug trafficking.  According to the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons’ 2016 report,“Armenia is a source and, to a lesser extent, destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex and labor trafficking.  The sex and labor trafficking of Armenian women and children within the country is an increasing problem.  Women and girls from Armenia are also subjected to sex trafficking in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.  Armenian women and children are vulnerable to forced begging domestically.  Some children work in agriculture, construction, and service provision within the country, where they are also vulnerable to labor trafficking.  Men in rural areas with little education and children in child care institutions remain highly vulnerable to trafficking.  Conflict-displaced persons, including Syrian Armenians, living in Armenia are at risk of exploitation and have been subjected to bonded labor.”[4] 

 

According to the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings’ 2016 evaluation of Armenia, “The prevailing form of exploitation is sexual exploitation, followed by forced labour or services, the removal of organs, and in one case of internal trafficking of a child for the purpose of forced begging.”[5]  Armenian journalist, Anna Muradyan, has found that in Armenian society the young women who’ve lived in state institutions “are seen as little more than potential sex workers and young men as latent criminals.”  Compounding the problem is that “[m]any employers either avoid employing young people from children’s homes or refuse to legally register them as employees once they learn of their status.”[6]  In other words, formerly institutionalized persons are at a disadvantage in the job market, and hence, more vulnerable to illegitimate and exploitative labor and trafficking. 

 

 

On the surface, the subject of Armenian orphans presents as something from a foregone past.  Why discuss Armenian orphans now when there are more than 65 million refugees worldwide, the most in recorded history, due to all those aforementioned push and pull factors, and when other minorities, such as the Rohingya, are being persecuted, when the children of Yemen, Syria, and South Sudan are being starved and orphaned, when at-risk children round the world are being exploited and trafficked?  The most basic, most compelling reason is that these breakdowns and shortcomings, these epic humanitarian failings, are constant.  Since history’s earliest records, continuous in the human race are the abysmal and repeating tragedies of war, genocide, famine, orphans, and outcasts. 

 

Herbert Hirsch, Ph.D., Department of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University, commenting on the Rohingya crisis states, “We can add another chapter to the long history of human atrocity and genocide.”  He questions why there isn’t more being done to protect the innocent and persecuted, and maintains that the defense of truth and justice is everyone’s business.[7]  Yet, in this age of fast-news, headlines crafted for attention deficits, celebrity idolizing, and self-centric social media, the long conversation is a tough sell.  Breaking news, no matter how worrying, quickly becomes passé.  Hirsch believes that we should be outraged; and yet the time that it takes for those initial hot bursts of empathy to cool down to an apathetic acceptance seems to grow shorter and shorter.  Are we overwhelmed?  In denial?  Do we acclimate to the tragedies of life, or, perhaps, assume that someone else will take care of things?

 

Whatever the case, we as a human race may want to believe that we’ve transcended these great catastrophes, that we know how to do peace, economy, community, and family.  But from the vulnerable minorities of Asia Minor to those in Southeast Asia, the evidence shows that we have not.  The problems are as age-old—and current—as humankind itself.  As sophisticated as we may like to think we are, we haven’t managed to evolve ourselves beyond tragedy.  Consequently, if we’re not pushing forward for greater equality and humanity, then we are silently collaborating in the continued marginalization of future generations.  And so if it isn’t outrage that drives us onward, then it’s something deeper that seeks to balance the scale that ever-vacillates between human degradation and dignity.  Perhaps, even subconsciously, it’s that recognition that this is the human story of which we are all part.  In light of where we’ve been and still are, I venture that we possess the desire to work towards better tomorrows and healthier, more peaceful next generations.  This being so, ultimately, the discussion of Armenian social orphans is part and parcel to the shared responsibility of ensuring the right to thrive for all the world’s children in whom lie humanity’s potential.  It recognizes that there are no isolated events, no “us versus them,” and that life is always happening within a larger context, and as such deserves wider vision. 

 

 

The quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. that graces the opening pages of the United Nations Development Programme’s 2014 Report on Human Development reads, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable…”  It doesn’t just happen.  Progress in actual human development within a society depends on such things as increasing the ability to be educated, to be healthy and feel safe, to have a reasonable standard of living, and, in general, by enlarging critical choices, says the Report.  First though, individuals and societies must know their rights, what their choices are, and how to choose wisely.[8] 

 

The report states that vulnerability—that is, exposure to risk and risk management—must be mitigated in order for humans to develop their potential. 

“Human vulnerability is not new, but it is increasing due to financial instability and mounting environmental pressures such as Climate Change, which have a growing potential to undermine progress in human development.  Indeed, since 2008 there has been a deceleration in the growth of all three components of the Human Development Index in most regions of the world.”[9]  At most profound risks of any vulnerable groupings are children and disabled, who also make up a large portion of the world’s poor.

 

 

During a phone conversation in November 2017 with Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Jane Buchanan, Associate Director for Europe and Central Asia, she commented that Armenia is in a uniquely strong position due to its diaspora that has much concern for its homeland and the agency to affect change.  Because of this, perhaps, Armenia has earned exemplary standing on the world stage.  In almost any discourse on genocide, dispersion of peoples, and loss of statehood, Armenia is a starting point.  One of the unique features of Armenia is that is has an active and united diaspora; and diasporas have the power to change a homeland by holding national conversations, elevating advocacy to the international level, and holding governments accountable to international human rights laws and standards.

 

According to the Consulate General of Armenia in Los Angeles, the Armenian American community is the second largest in the world (outside Armenia).  The United States is home to more than a million Armenians, and approximately half reside in California.  Worth noting is that the population of Armenia itself is fewer than 3 million, and actually decreasing due to lower birthrates and outmigration, otherwise know as “brain drain,” meaning that educated, talented working Armenian nationals are leaving home in search of work abroad, and may or may not return.  Due to economic downturns, Italy and Greece, for example, have been experiencing comparable brain drains in recent years.  It’s not only an Armenian problem, but a problem of the ages that knows no geographic or political bounds.

 

A diaspora often has the means for developing an economically-challenged homeland, as well as influencing domestic policy.  Mainstream international relations and aid organizations may not fully address the issues, nor have the same sphere of influence in cross-cultural communications and relations as does a diaspora.  A diaspora can provide a mode of change in host and home countries.  A diaspora such as the Armenian has the ability to enact diplomacy, participate in peace building, democracy building, and capacity building.  Because of Armenia’s location in the Caucasus, and historical Greater Armenia’s position along the Silk Road, Armenia has long been geopolitically pivotal in globalization.  It was the first of the Soviet nations to declare its independence.  Moreover, said HRW’s Jane Buchanan, Armenia is proving to be on the forefront of progressive reforms, leading the region in some ways on child welfare, for example, targeted at raising the quality of care and practices to recommended international standards.  

 

World Children’s Day, celebrated each November 20^th, is an annual reminder of those standards, and that children of every nation have inherent rights. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) and theUnited Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) make reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights wherein the United Nations declares that childhood is entitled to special care and assistance, and that no matter how much the world changes, the needs of children do not.  Summarized in the mission of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), “all children have a right to survive, thrive and fulfill their potential, which is to the benefit of a better world.” 

 

Correspondingly, it is accepted as fact that for full development, a child should grow up within a family environment that offers love, understanding, and a chance for happiness, while, of course, recognizing that everywhere in the world there are children living in exceptionally difficult conditions, and as such deserve special consideration.  Of any nation or race, abandoned children are a crisis of humanity and conscience.  Indeed, Maria Montessori wrote of the abandoned child as a universal catastrophe.[10]  And so while this is an examination of children in Armenia, it includes children more broadly, and goes without saying that children are our world’s most precious and valuable resources, not commodities or consumers.  Caring for children redirects us back to the common good, the foundation of any responsible society. 

 

 

According to Hripsime Muradyan, Executive Director of Society for Orphaned Armenia Relief (SOAR), in Armenia, any improvements in the situation of social orphans depends upon an overall improvement in the socioeconomic conditions in Armenia.  This would include opening more job placement agencies, decreasing the “brain drain,” the high outmigration rate, providing general welfare benefits to large families, and improving equal access to health care and education.  During our October 2017 email conversations, acknowledging certain deprivations that come with institutionalization, Muradyan stated, “As a manager of SOAR, I am very sensitive [to and concerned] about the future of children who have been deprived of parental care and love in their lives, and still hope for a better future.” 

 

When asked about poverty and the breakdown of family, and what remedial measures are being taken, she submitted to me an article excerpt by George Yacoubian, founder and executive chair of SOAR, US.  The excerpt addresses the international recommendations to “deinstitutionalize,” to redistribute diasporic funding and to close certain “night care institutions” and residential facilities for children with disabilities.  The process of deinstitutionalization undertaken by the Armenian government at the recommendation of international monitoring bodies includes reducing the number of children in state residential institutions, returning children to their families with the support of community-based family services, and reforming the public educational system to integrate children with disabilities into their local schools and communities.

 

“[D]einstitutionalization of Armenia’s boarding schools and orphanages has gained momentum as one significant step toward family reunification.  The Armenian government, the Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief (SOAR), and other domestic and international non-government organizations (NGOs) recognize that, all conditions being equal, children usually enjoy better long-term outcomes when [reared] by their biological families.  That said, the desire to reunify should not be incorporated into Armenia’s social policy as an absolute maxim.

 

SOAR cannot, and we hope other NGOs will not, reflexively demand reunification (quickly or at all) simply because a home environment is assumed to be better than institutional life.  It is irresponsible and potentially physically and emotionally harmful to insist that children be reunified with their families “immediately and under all circumstances.”  Such efforts may accomplish the basic task of reunifying, but may also expose the child to the same (or worse) conditions that necessitated the original institutionalization.  Whether the underlying social issue is poverty, domestic violence, malnutrition, poor hygiene, sexual abuse, the risk of trafficking, parental alcoholism, or a combination, children will unquestionably suffer more harm when the system fails to address these issues prior to reunification.”

Putting the situation into context, poverty in Armenia is pervasive for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is its geopolitical instability and landlocked position within four nations, two of which, Turkey and Azerbaijan, maintain closed borders.  Living conditions and upward socioeconomic growth are consequently strained.  The United Nations International Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) 2016 report on Child Poverty in Armenia: National Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis, the first report of its kind in the Caucasus region, states that while poverty affects different groups of the population differently, children are consistently found to be at a higher risk than other groups, resulting in more orphaned and institutionalized children, children living on the streets, and begging or otherwise laboring rather than attending school.  There are no mobile task forces to work with street children; therefore, the usual first line of government engagement with street children is the police force, which is not ideal.[11]

 

Childhood poverty is particularly harmful because it not only hurts children during their youth, but imposes longer-term, later life consequences as well. [12]  Poverty prevents youth from properly integrating into society, and thus inhibits their ability to contribute therein.  “For children, poverty means being deprived in crucial aspects of their lives, such as nutrition, education, leisure, or housing.  These deprivations go beyond monetary aspects, not only affecting the quality of their life at present, but also their ability to grow to their full potential in the future,” said UNICEF Representative in Armenia,Tanja Radocaj.[13]  All told, this speaks to a loss of potential in children not only in Armenia, but anywhere, which bodes cautiously for future generations everywhere.      

 

Hripsime Muradyan asserted that it is the “responsibility of the state to take care of the children and to provide equal conditions for them, and that the contributions from the diaspora are huge and invaluable.”  As Yacoubian points out, some children could be left to fend for themselves in dire circumstances if not for the state institutions and diasporic support.  Still, “[w]hile governments have obligations to provide for alternative care where a child is deprived of their own family environment, long-term institutional care is not a suitable alternative to family-based care for any child, whether with or without disabilities.  Even the most well-resourced institutions cannot replace a family, and research by UNICEF and others has demonstrated that life in institutions can have serious [negative] consequences for children’s physical, cognitive, and emotional development.”[14]  

 

 

I would interject the premise, referred to as “institutional syndrome,” that institutions often have a debilitating or dehumanizing effect, and create an undue helplessness within the child.  Adding to this idea, states HRW’s Buchanan, “Years of social science research has shown that institutions are in themselves disabling.  Children growing up in institutions are likely to remain institutionalized their whole lives.”  Sequestered away from family, society, and the world at large, equals a life of no-to-little independence or meaningful life choices.[15]  Dr. JuanCarlos Arauz, professor of education and founder of the educational nonprofit, E3, has said that "[c]hildren die physically, mentally and spiritually when they are institutionally led to believe they have nothing to offer the world.​”[16]  Success in life depends on knowing, valuing, and being able to put to use one’s capabilities, talents, and gifts. Moreover, states Anna Muradyan (no relation to the former Muradyan), in her 2016 piece for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, resultant of institutional syndrome, learned helplessness, and stigmatization, “[c]hildren raised in [state] care homes are marginalised by society, even after they reach adulthood.[17]  

 

In post-Soviet countries, in addition to providing child care, state residential institutions typically serve as a sort of distribution center for social services.  Traditionally, government spending on social services (outside of institutions) is fairly low.  Institutions, however, receive government and private funding on a per-child basis.  The more children on the inside, the more funding an institution receives, which means there’s an advantage to keeping facilities filled.  Thus, getting staff on board with deinstitutionalization may require an assurance of job and financial security.  Particularly in a nation that continues to struggle economically, the need for lucrative work is very real.  In order for deinstitutionalization to happen in a way that staff would retain employment, staff would need to be willing to retrain and retool their job skills for community-based service provision rather than closed-door operations.  It would require a whole new mindset, as well as political will and a redirection of diasporic donations.

 

Because of the structure of this system, it could be assumed that children are unnecessarily separated from their families.  HRW has found that Armenia’s orphanages and other closed residential institutions are home to children who likely have a parent, parents, or relatives who, feasibly, could care for them.  In fact, only 10% of institutionalized children are natural orphans.  This being so, HRW has called for a prioritization of children over institutions, indicating that (1) institutional care of, and behavior towards, children must be raised to international standards, and (2) more easily accessed, community-based, outpatient services be put in place to assist with education and rehabilitation for children with disabilities. [18]  If services were available within local communities, presumably, families would be less inclined to institutionalize a child.

 

In an April 2017 Armenian Mirror Spectator article on the Human Rights Watch recommendations, journalist Alin Gregorian spoke with Armenia’s ambassador to the United States, Grigor Hovhannissian.  Hovhannissian is quoted as being in agreement with HRW’s findings and recommendations, and also notes that Armenia has “inherited the Soviet system of institutionalized child care… The totalitarian heritage is based on the premise of isolation, taking children out of context to make society healthy… [The way it handles] people with handicaps, people outside the mainstream, [is to edit them out of society].”[19]  There are longstanding myths, taboos, stigmas, and consequent discrimination attached to be disabled and to being institutionalized, whether due to poverty, family disruptions, or disabilities.  There still exist some false assumptions, for example, that children with disabilities present a public health threat, are reflective of a family’s flawed gene pool, or that orphaned children are inherently deviant; thus the practice of segregation. 

 

Anecdotally, while working in “early intervention” classes in California’s public school system with children who have special needs, a teacher told me about a six-year old child in the class who’d been adopted from a Russian orphanage.  For the first five years of life, the boy had lived in a Soviet-style residential institution.  Diagnosed with mild autism and other developmental and behavioural issues by doctors in California, he’d been placed in a school where I’ve worked.  His teacher explained the great strides this boy had made in less than a year’s time.  Prior to his adoption and upon entering the California school system, he’d been withdrawn and difficult to reach, at times emotionally volatile, and struggled to communicate verbally.  For years, he’d seemed unable to engage, interact, or speak of his own accord.  His adopted parents and new teachers realized that in addition to his various impediments, he was exhibiting the effects of early trauma.  The teacher, committed to helping children “find their voice and confidence,” stressed to me the importance of a child learning early on how to speak up, how to appropriately use the word “no,” and to learn that he or she has rights.  Children from abusive, traumatic, or neglectful backgrounds typically do not possess a healthy understanding of these things.  That, compounded with any sort of disability, makes a child an easy target for bullying, abuse, and even trafficking. 

 

Just as Hripsime Muradyan had said, Zara Sargsyan, Communication Officer with UNICEF Armenia, in a November 2017 email exchange with me, also affirmed that the “diaspora has been playing a big role in improving conditions in orphanages through generous donations.  Most orphanages are well equipped by now.”  In fact, HRW has reported that some institutions are so well invested and equipped, that there are actually more staff than children, and that high tech amenities go unused.  When Buchanan and other delegates of HRW inspected the Marie Izmirlyan orphanage in Yerevan, which houses 100 children with special needs and has state-of-the-art facilities, the institution was spotlighted as a “prime example of everything that’s wrong with Armenia’s system of closed institutions.”  Private (diasporic) funds have built an indoor swimming pool and a therapeutic whirlpool, for instance, and “in four visits to the orphanage on different days and times of day, I only ever saw one child in the therapy rooms,” reported Buchanan. “Instead, I saw the same children in the same rooms, including 15 children who spent most of their lives lying in beds, with just two caregivers.  Some of them were bound to their beds with cloth ties.” [20]

 

Sargsyan explained,“ [T]his flow of funding creates a strong incentive for these institutions to resist changes, and children have less chance to get what they need in a family environment.  Institutional care has negative effects on children. Youngest children are most affected as they can only thrive through individualized, caring interactions.  Due to the criticality of brain development in young age, the consequences of impersonal, collective care are likely to affect children’s ability to learn, work, and form responsible relationships later in life.  Older children do not learn important life skills and are unprepared for life outside the institution, [a feature of institutional syndrome].  Simply said, one can only learn what family and community life is by actually living in a family and community.  This is what well-intended donors often don’t realize.  Better support to biological families, including extended family or foster family when parents are not capable, better services in community (spread across the country) to support families of children with disabilities…these approaches would be much more beneficial for Armenian children.”

 

 

Sargsyan also explained that there is widespread belief in the former Soviet countries that a child with any sort of developmental challenges cannot live within a family.  This, combined with a lack of available, community-based services to support parents and children, keep alive the misconception that it’s better for the child to be removed from family and society.  Making changes for long-term extends to updating perceptions and beliefs via new information and training, and implementing psychosocial trauma intervention for institutionalized children and often for their families too.  In an extraordinary breakout move, Bari Mama is working to that end. 

 

Motivated by a compassion greater than any prevailing norms and pressure, Marina Adulyan in 2014 after reading about a child born with disabilities and abandoned to a state institution, took it upon herself to do something.  She and a group of mothers who call themselves “Bari Mama” took turns caring for the baby, and in time found a way to reunite him with his family.  This initial, bold step gained momentum, and the organized volunteers are on a mission to stop the abandonment of children with special needs.  The work of Bari Mama, now a continuous and growing moment, ranges from hospital and orphanage visits, to educating and empowering parents with information to help them withstand long-held social and familial stigmatizing pressure, to openly taking on taboo topics with awareness-raising campaigns, and charity events. 

 

Regardless of how well equipped, funded, or staffed an orphan institution might be, Adulyan asserts that institutions do not serve the best needs of children, that children, first and foremost, need the love and care of family.[21]  What's more, the need for love, care, and affection is too often left out of the equation when addressing basic human needs.  Love is implicit in the formula for healing, as utilized by Bari Mama, and in the changes prescribed by HRW, UNICEF, and other aid organizations.  There are studies, for example, that show the healthful impact on the human who receives daily hugs.  It’s purported that 12 hugs per day help a person to thrive, that it strengthens the immune system, raises serotonin levels, thusly decreasing anxiety and depression, and bolstering self-esteem.

 

 

To the point of necessarily changing outmoded beliefs and mores, Narek Manukyan, chief of staff at the National Program for Educational Excellence, in his report “Independence Generation: Education, Social Aspirations and Implications for Development,” writes that “[t]ransition is first and foremost a change in societalperceptions and aspirations.  Transitional societies,as a rule, are environments of ‘contradictorysocial constructs’ where ‘old’ and ‘new,’local and global values and ideologies coexist and‘compete’ within a same reality.  To change the reality,societal perceptions and aspirations need tobe addressed systematically.[22]

 

In another “Independence Generation” report from November 2017 by Yevgenia Jenny Paturyan titled, “Attitudes Toward Democracy and Government,” based on a polling of Armenian youth, determined that Russia is considered Armenia’s admired friend.  Generally, Armenian youth report feeling distrustful towards political institutions and processes, and the study reveals “misperceptions or confused ideas about democracy, liberalism, and capitalism.  77 percent of the respondents of the Independence Generation study are interested in Armenian politics.  Next, in [political affairs] interest is not the Caucasus, the world, Europe or Turkey…[it’s] Russia.  This is a fairly clear signal of what part of the world Armenian youth is watching, regarding political processes.”  In keeping with preceding generations, “Armenian youth fall on the socialist end of the spectrum…[and] 64 percent want the state to be responsible for the social welfare of its people, with 50 percent choosing the strongest possible option.” [23]

 

These are Millennials, mind you, not Cold War kids, but youth who’ve grown up with access to the Internet, and thereby more global exposure.  Hypothetically, this information may reveal a reactionary stance against the western political machine, or it may show a certain reliance on, or even faith in, state institutions.  A reliance that spans generations plausibly indicates a general disinterest in, or reluctance to, deinstitutionalization.  Indeed, it cannot be overlooked that the physiology and psychology of individuals and communities are shaped by the environment and society in which they live.  Government as facilitator of social services and institutions, of course, has its place.  Maintaining a balanced degree of skepticism of the West and its ideals has its place too.  Western ideals need not usurp those of Armenia, the Caucasus region, or elsewhere.  They may, however, inform or reconcile confusion, and shape future decisions. 

 

Paraphrasing Aristotle, freedom is the basis of democracy, including having the freedom of mind with which to question prevailing thought.  Accordingly, engaging in informed dialogue about democracy and humanitarianism, for example, could empower upcoming Armenian generations by considering what freedom of thought and speech means when accompanied by a developed moral certitude.  Rather than recapitulating a value system that’s simply handed down by tradition or social and culture mores, a subjective interpretation of reality thrust from a foreign culture, or an adopted ideology, being a whole person involves soul and spirit, instinct and intuition, and the ability to discern truth from distortions of truth.  As Václav Havel writes in The Art of the Impossible, habits of mind formed in the Soviet era call for reconciliation with democracy.[24]

 

With further regard to the political sphere, from Titizian’s “Independence Generation” report, the study on family reveals that patriarchy persists as the norm for the Armenian family, and that “[t]here are more social controls by parents and older relatives (including the ‘village’) on girls and young women than their male counterparts…And with more social controls on women….women are less inclined to be politically and socially active.”  The study shows that social and political decision-making remains the domain of males much more so than females, which is to the detriment of developing an equal Armenian society, and may well factor in to the higher value placed on boys and men. [25] 

 

“Gender equality is misunderstood as a threat to family values,” says Catherine Wolf, Programme Analyst, United Nations Women’s Fund for Gender Equality, after her monitoring tour of Armenia in autumn 2017.  Moreover, she sees that the severe lack of economic opportunities that propel men to migrate creating an added sense of insecurity and risk of violence against women and girls in the patriarchal nation.[26]  This is another aspect of the imploding family unit.  A related matter which is important to include here—and beyond the scope of this paper, yet illuminates the patriarchal societal feature—is that Armenia, ranks third after China and Azerbaijan, for highest rate of sex-selective (female fetus) abortions in the world.  This would imply that the value of females is less than that of males.[27]  As well, due to “high numbers of unemployed women, and [the common] belief that women should stay home and take care of family, Armenian women on average earn half of what the men do.  Therefore, women who get pregnant with girls face a dilemma: give birth to enough children [until] one of them ends up being a boy, or have abortions until one of them is male,” writes Anna Pujol-Mazzini in her Reuter’s piece on the value of Armenian women and sex-selective abortions.[28]

 

Gender inequality is also highlighted in the systemic pressure to institutionalize children who fit the assumed criteria.  As Sargsyan relayed, “Gender plays a big role when it comes to single mothers.  Being a single mother is often considered a ‘valid’ reason to place a child in an orphanage.  As well, divorced and widowed mothers are often expected not to bring their children into a new partnership or marriage, which leads children into institutions.”

 

 

Returning to Paturyan’s study on political attitudes of the youth, “[International] scholars and policy-makers are increasingly advocating for [Armenia] to mov[e] from general to specific, tailor-made solutions that engage the community in the process of designing or reshaping [state] institutions...”  Her recommendation is not to hold more awareness-raising campaigns in an attempt to shift the mindsets and beliefs of Armenians.  As she writes, “If these tactics haven’t worked in the last two decades, there is little reason to believe they will work now.”  Paturyan, an educator, instead recommends encouraging the curiosity of young minds.  “At a time when the world is questioning the Washington consensus and the dominance of the neo-liberal paradigm, it is naïve to expect the [next generation of] Armenians to embrace those values.”  Instead, they must seek out their own solutions through education, by gaining knowledge of international laws and rights, by learning to think critically, and to thoughtfully consider their options.  

 

In terms of the institutions of the commons, as in education and health care, it is important to hear from the very youth for whom institutionalization is, or was, a lived experience.  On 20 November 2017, World Children’s Day, UNICEF held “Kids Take Over” forums around the world to do just that.  In Yerevan, children took to the podium in Parliament, speaking out on critical issues that directly impact them. They spoke about violence against children, the right of every child to develop their potential, to become educated, to have access to healthy food, proper nutrition, and health care, and to grow up in a caring family.  Since then, UNICEF, Armenia has been running a social media campaign, “#EndViolence,” in which it’s bringing to light offenses against children from baby-shaking to screaming and child beating.  It says, “This must STOP,” denoting a very real and ongoing familial and societal problem.[29]

 

 

Another aspect of the Soviet mindset holdover shows itself in the prevailing outlook on foster care, guardianship, and adoption, which are typically not considered ready alternatives to institutionalization.  “In Armenia and across theregion for the past 20 years, UNICEF has been advocating for change from reliance on the big, Soviet-type residential institutions by working with partner organizations to further reduce the number of children in residential care by half; right now some 3,000 children are placed in different types of residential care,” said Zara Sargsyan, Communication Officer, UNICEF Armenia, in our continued email conversation.

 

Sargsyan went on to say that there are “[p]lans are to close some of the orphanages—the so-called ‘night care institutions,’ residential institutions where a child goes home during school holidays, and boarding schools for children with disabilities.  The aim is for the majority of children to return to their families of origin, and for some to be placed with foster families.  Apart from policy and legislative changes, our work has been focused on the creation of preventive services, such as social work and better social protections, changing attitudes towards disabilities, opening daycare centres, widening the foster care system, other support services for families, and for community schools to provide inclusive education.  We have only 25 foster families in the country, which is too low.” 

 

Accentuating this assertion, the 2017 HRW study on abuses and discrimination against children in institutions and lack of access to quality, inclusive education in Armenia, “When Will I Get To Go Home?” states that “mechanisms for foster care and adoption are underdeveloped, leaving referral to residential institutions the only resort in the overwhelming majority of cases in which remaining in or returning to the biological family is not possible or not in a child’s best interest.”[30]

 

 

In terms of remedial actions, Buchanan’s report notes that it could be a matter of reallocating funds away from closed, state institutions directly to parents and families for food, health care, rehabilitation services, transportation, education and school supplies.  Such redistribution would also fund social work and foster care rather than institutional housing and its accompanying overhead.  Similarly, stated Sargsyan of UNICEF, “We are advocating for community-based family and child support services to prevent child abandonment whenever possible; this means also for inclusive services and education for children with disabilities.  Some of the alternatives to orphanages and night care institutions that we have worked on have spanned from adoption to foster care and kinship care in the extended family.”  Both Buchanan and Sargsyan have issued their respective organizations’ position, which, broadly, prioritizes family reunification. 

 

Support from the Armenian diaspora is thought to play a decisive role, particularly in assigning where their funds are to be spent and in the exertion of political will.  Sargsyan, reiterating that, generally speaking, children thrive best within a family, added that the “flow of funding from the diaspora creates a strong incentive for these institutions to resist change, and children have less of a chance to get what they need in an institutional environment.  Well-intended donors often don’t understand the reality of the situation.”  Likewise, HRW has advised that the diaspora scale back on funding state institutions, and to shift instead to funding community-based services provided or sponsored by nongovernmental organizations that directly serve Armenians.  There are NGOs in Armenia that cater to local schools in the provinces, offer family support, transportation services like school buses and taxis, and provide backpacks and school supplies.  Filling these needs could keep families together, improve communities, socialize otherwise isolated children, and therefore negate the need for institutionalization.

Corrective action advises centering on helping families to stay together and care for their children by moving services out of institutions and into local communities where families can access them.  This is of particular import for those who live in the more remote provinces.  UNICEF and HRW purport that in addition to being a more economical practice, children would be spared any would-be trauma of institutionalization.  Mission East, a Danish aid organization that’s been working in Armenia for the past 20 years; in fact, one that I personally met with in Armenia in 1997, describes how Armenians with disabilities, children with special needs of any kind, and the rural poor have had far fewer chances for education and health care services, have been discriminated against, and excluded from normal society due to ongoing stigmatization.  Lacking education and sufficient information about their rights, these groups have few or no safety nets, and very limited opportunities for improving their lot in life.  One of Mission East’s main aims via their numerous programs in Armenia is to break through the Soviet-styled, divisive stigmas attached to disabilities, family problems, and poverty by working for inclusive, quality education for all children, for training educators, and informing parents on the benefits of inclusivity rather than institutionalization.[31]

 

Sargsyan relayed that for the last 20 years “UNICEF has been advocating for and working on changing the type of care that relies on big Soviet-type residential institutions for delivery, not only in Armenia but across the region.  Improvement in Armenia was achieved some 10 years ago, when numbers of children in residential care were reduced.”  UNICEF continues to support the Armenian government’s goal for a 50 percent reduction in children institutionalized across the country.  “A memorandum of understanding with the government calls for 22 residential institutions, including orphanages, special schools, and night boarding institutions, under different ministries to be transformed to provide community-based services…  The [revised] system should include professional social workers working locally in communities who would assess the assets, challenges, and needs of each family, and make decisions [for the types of] support needed, including cash and in-kind services; the support is to be as personalized as possible.”[32]

 

 

Sargsyan restates, “Another significant reason for continued institutionalization is the stigma attached to having a child with a disability, and the widespread belief that a child born with any developmental challenge cannot live in a family.”  Stigmatization, combined with lack of community-based services to support parents and children, leave families with few, if any, alternatives, and in most cases, the parents will turn their child over to state care.  Elaborating, “When a child is born with disabilities, there is big pressure from family, and even professionals, on the mother to relinquish her child.  Those mothers who are not willing to give up their children have nowhere to turn.  As of September 2017, there are 679 children residing in state orphanages of which 490 are children with disabilities.  Additionally, 1,112 children reside in night care institutions.”  This returns to H.E. Hovhannissian’s point on editing disabled children from society.  In addition to outside pressure, very often the families themselves believe that producing a disabled or special needs child is indicative of unhealthy genetics, and therefore something to hide. 

 

In keeping with the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, HRW and UNICEF, Armenia recommend inclusive education for children with disabilities.  To be clear, “inclusive education” doesn’t mean including children with special needs and different learning styles into conventional classrooms with students who are able to learn in the traditional model of education.  It means providing equal opportunities for all students at the local level in or near traditional schools, which reduces alienation for disabled children and their families.  Additionally, rather than putting a child into state care, perhaps indefinitely, the international standard of care advocates for keeping the family together as much as possible, and for educating and rehabilitating the child within his or her home community.  In Armenia, inclusive education is considered “charity,” and as such, more of a rarity than standard of practice.  Nonetheless, due to international laws, monitoring, and recommendations, the Armenian government is now more focused on making inclusive schools a reality.  According to HRW and UNICEF, the government’s failure to provide inclusive schools with teachers trained in special education, and reasonable accommodations for disabled children within schools constitutes discrimination.

 

 

As previously suggested, deinstitutionalization of residential care orphanages may be slowed by the continuous flow of funds from the diaspora into the state institutions.  While it’s true that remedial action must happen through multiple channels (via policy and legal changes, societal changes, family support, economic improvements, and equal educational opportunities), proposed solutions include educating the diaspora, redirecting diasporic funds from residential care institutions to other initiatives like local family support centers and foster care families.  In short, as Buchanan has stated, the best interest of children are at the heart of these recommended changes, which also includes the family.

 

Recapping, to address these needs, UNICEF recommends a deinstitutionalization and transformation of residential child care facilities, a strengthening of national child protection agencies, and to improve on policies specific to children from vulnerable groups to realize their right to quality education, and for more supportive juvenile justice measures, including restorative justice and rehabilitation rather than punishment for street children and beggars.  Each of these recommendations ultimately involves providing opportunities for homeless, abandoned, orphaned and other-abled children to be integrated into society.

 

UNICEF, HRW, and other NGOs working in Armenia, such as World Vision, are in favor of working with the Armenian diaspora.  On this point, Sargsyan conveyed that besides funding, “another important contribution of diaspora members would be to bring to the country contemporary knowledge about child development and care.  There are some excellent professionals who are already doing that, but more are needed.  For that reason UNICEF has partnered with AGBU, for example, offering a platform for bringing diasporic expertise to Armenia (www.Together4Armenia.am).  However, the problem in this particular area of work is that orphanages and other residential care institutions are not as interested in the expertise existing among diaspora members as in their donations.” 

 

Sargsyan, who works in Armenia and not from a global headquarters, and has thereby seen the makings for misunderstandings between Armenian nationals and the diaspora, has repeated the fact that the diaspora may not be fully in touch with the actual needs and desires of those in the homeland.  Despite familial and ethnic ties, an Armenian national may not appreciate being told by the diaspora how and when to change no matter how “expert,” “excellent,” or well-meaning the advice.  Thus, any recommendations must be put forward respectfully, with sensitivity, and in the spirit of sharing and caring.  Changing the mindset of any person, society, or culture, for example, those working within state institutions, generally doesn’t happen easily.  Few humans like being told to change, especially by an outside source.  However, by taking an​ educational and circular (rather than hierarchical) approach to the facilitation of change, each person involved is valued and assumed to have both something to teach as well as to learn.  The opposite of “top down,” this sort of inclusiveness maintains sight of the issue at hand—in this case, best welfare of children—and allows people to have a say in how their changes will transpire.  

 

One way around any potential tension would be to fund local efforts rather than institutions, and as Buchanan has explained, there are numerous programs in the provinces (marzes) that are managed under reputable NGOs like World Vision, to name one, which works with the Armenian Ministry of Health.  Their Early Childhood Development programme benefits parents and children from the prenatal level to the preschool with an emphasis on parental education.[33]  This is uniquely groundbreaking in that it involves parents in the decision-making processes by not only empowering them with new information, but by taking into account the oft-unaddressed feelings of parents, many of whom surely anguish over parting with their children.

 

According to the Human Development Index (an instrument of the United Nations Development Programme for evaluating human well-being), having access to opportunities and choices, and cultivated decision-making skills are the real underpinnings for moving from basic survival to a life of thriving.  High development, it’s found, is not accomplished strictly through economic growth.  Rather, economic growth is a means to human growth, greater well-being, and the fullness of life.  In as much as poverty is a hindrance to development, financial resources are only part of the equation.  In fact, good health, education, peace, and loving relationships comprise “success” in human development as much or more than finances alone.  Fundamentally, having access to more choices in life—as well as possessing the ability to make wise choices—is considered part and parcel to full-rounded human development processes.  Of the human development index measurements of health, education, and income, education is identified as being key to breaking cycles of poverty, for example, in addition to halting human-invented misconceptions (stigmas), disease, abuse, violence, and conflict.[34] 

 

Generally, with the expanse of minds and worldviews, education generates feelings of possibilities and opens more doors of opportunities—things not usually experienced by those affected by institutional syndrome.  Cultural, societal, and institutional barriers like gender bias, misogyny, or stigmatization associated with disabilities and abandonment, are often the most challenging to overcome; yet quality, inclusive education can help, particularly when laws regarding such are established and drawn upon.  For these laws to be carried out in accordance with recommendations, multiple levels of government are called to action: policy, services, capacity, coordination, and accountability.[35]  

 

Reiterating the recommendations of the international monitoring bodies, UNICEF and HRW, Buchanan of HRW in our phone conversation, spoke of their commitment to keeping the best interest of children at the forefront while equally holding to the commitment to raise standards of care and practice to the level of international goals.  To accomplish these goals will take a multilateral approach that includes educating the diaspora, and in all probability, retraining current institutional staff in Armenia.  It will require communication between the diaspora and Armenia and agreeing on common goals.  As times are changing, the Soviet style of operating must be updated, and individuals in the system need to evolve with emerging new information, the needs of children, families, and society, with the aim of rising to meet the standards stipulated by international laws that protect and champion children’s rights and well-being.  Social mores and attitudes are more given to change when international laws are upheld, which can lead to changes in national policies and behaviour. 

 

Changes would involve a redirection of funds from the institutions of exclusion and into inclusive education, into special education teachers, and family support, including foster and adoptive families.  Continued funding of state institutions, indicated Buchanan, may be working at cross parallels, and not helping as many children as possible, especially as the Armenian government itself is looking to build up social work, and is starting to reallocate staff to new positions and ways of working.  Another key aim of a redirection of funds into local projects is to renew and uphold family as the original and time-honored cornerstone, societal institution (rather than the state).

 

If choice is equated to high-level human development, then dignity of risk must be permitted.  Indeed, choice and risk—otherwise known as free will—is the very hallmark of being fully human.  The concept of “dignity of risk” asserts that autonomy of self (as much as is reasonably possible, all things being equal) and the right to take reasonable risks are pertinent to achieving self-dignity and self-esteem.  Over-protection, such as occurs when one is disallowed any chance for making ones own decisions, is a frequent consequence of institutionalization, and moreover, is another form of dispossession. 

 

Dignity of risk is most commonly associated with adults (of any able-ness), and incrementally applies to children during each stage of growth and development.  To be clear, dignity of risk is not the promotion of recklessness or promiscuity, or a way to jeopardize health and safety.  Nor is allowing dignity of risk an excuse to evade responsibility for those requiring adult supervision.  There is, to be sure, a balance between institutional caretakers’ duty of care and allowance of those under care to experience dignity in risk taking and choice making.  Granting dignity of risk not only empowers the individual, but also confronts taboos, weakens the grip of stigma, and lessens discriminatory attitudes of those in the immediate and greater environment.  As exhibited in institutional syndrome, when growing children are disallowed opportunities to make their own (age-appropriate) decisions, they acquire an undue sense of helplessness, lower self-confidence and esteem, and do not mature, emotionally or intellectually, as they would in a more natural living environment.

 

Removal of a human being from the bulk of society also removes the opportunity to experience more of the fullness of life.  Institutionalization and isolation take away the human right to choice and dignity of risk.  Just as isolating a fact or a piece of information from its larger context limits the truth or fullness of that data, or even renders it irrelevant, to separate a person from family and society diminishes that person’s chances for full, or fuller, development. 

 

This is by no means is a wholesale critique of the current system and practice of institutional care in Armenia, any more than have been the reports of findings by the Child Protection Network, UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, or any other international monitoring body.  Nor is this a reactionary bid for compulsory family reunification, which, as George Yacoubian has pointed out, would be irresponsible in many cases.  Some parents are unfit, some homes are unsafe, and some families are without the means to provide for a child with disabilities and special needs. 

 

This is a perspective, and a supplication of sorts, in particular to the diaspora with regards to its support of the homeland on a matter that bears far-reaching consequences: children.  Our future and most precious resources, children, require our protection and fosterage.  To do so, we must be able to differentiate sentimentality from reality. Moreover, the crisis today of orphans and abandoned children is symptomatic of deeper issues and imbalances that cry out for systemic change. 

 

If, as Maria Titizian has cited, the family is “one of the most important social constructs and institutions in Armenian society,” then it deserves healing.  Internal familial devolution via domestic violence, misogyny, sex-selective abortions, or child abandonment, as well as external, damaging factors like poverty, unemployment, or migration, warrant amelioration.  If the family is to truly be the backbone of society, it must evolve as a productive, positive, compassionate social force; otherwise, left unchecked the fractures will only deepen. 

 

The diaspora could have a hand in this healing.  One example is in the realm of domestic abuse.  Says Maro Matosian, Executive Director of the Women’s Support Center in Armenia, in an interview by Armine Ishkanian, Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, for openDemocracy in October 2017, on domestic violence in Armenia, “when it comes to social justice in Armenia there are not too many voices out there.  Part of it is because diasporans are uninformed about internal policies and laws…”  However, “Armenians from the US, France, UK, Lebanon and Turkey have signed…a letter that’s circulating collecting signatures in support of [a preventative and protective] law [on domestic violence] in Armenia.  This is perhaps the first time that individuals from the diaspora are taking a proactive position on an Armenian domestic policy.  People actually feel that this is a no-brainer and are genuinely revolted by the extent of domestic violence in Armenia (one in four women is a victim of abuse).”[36]

 

Similarly, diasporans may be largely uniformed on international and internal laws and policies regarding children’s rights and care.  Armenia’s 21^st century crises demands 21^st century intervention.  Having fought for human rights in the past, the right to exist, to have a voice, and participate on the international stage, Armenians—nationals and diasporans—are versed in working in solidarity.  That said, now and as before, orphaned and abandoned children (as well as is domestic violence, sex-selective abortions, et. al.) are but symptoms of deeper problems.  It is imperative to address the originating push and pull factors that created, and continue to create, the fragments in the family, society, and nation.  Factors like poverty, unemployment, migration and brain drain are all part and parcel to the problem of institutionalized children. 

 

Stating the obvious, times are changing, climates and environments, and international relationships are changing, and with these changes come new problems.  Globalization and the Internet keep us connected as never before.  Outmoded policies or an isolationist approach is not plausible, particularly for Armenia and other international convention signatory nations.  Since “its membership to the United Nations in 1992, the Republic of Armenia signed and ratified a number of international agreements, treaties and conventions, thus committing itself [to various obligations and thereby these] treaties are a constituent part of the legal system of the Republic of Armenia.”[37]  Among other reasons, policies, practices, and standards of care regarding children—impoverished, abandoned, orphaned, institutionalized, or with disabilities—must be upheld to the standards enumerated in those international laws, treaties, and conventions.  This leads to a well-rounded society that is better able to solve its problems at any level, be that social, spiritual, physical, economic, environmental, or political.

 

As Matosian has stated, “in any society [irrespective of attitudes and beliefs], the existence of legislation is a strong message [for what is] accepted or tolerated.  This also helps with changing attitudes, [which, of course, does not happen overnight].  International practice shows that while changing laws and policies and access to resources require sustained advocacy and pressure for implementation, they are still easier to achieve when there laws are place.”[38]  This bodes as useful information as the need to strengthen or broaden the capacity of public sector personnel has been cited.  Furthermore, each international organization has expressly stated the need and desire to include and work with the Armenian diaspora. 

 

Returning to the premise that a diaspora has political and economic sway, it is as important now as in last century for the diaspora to understand international laws from genocide and crimes against humanity to the rights of vulnerable populations (children, disabled, and women).  Seventy years of Soviet rule has had long-term side effects, evidenced clearly in the practice of institutionalization.  Because foster care, guardianship and kinship care, and adoption services are still underdeveloped and limited in scope, institutionalization is too often the only option.  As times change and new information emerges, this implores change.  With the right approach and through critical engagement, the diaspora can contribute to positive changes for the care of children in Armenia. 

 

Isolation and separateness compromise any human being, and in this context, the next generation, in their ability to meet their own needs, to make healthy choices, to navigate a rapidly changing world, and to therefore make a beneficial contribution.  This requires connection, nurturance, and love.  Quality, inclusive education provides a sense of safety and security for children, most especially when other facets of life are unstable and unpredictable.  Implementing kinship care, foster care, and adoption in Armenia will help to confront taboos and diminish age-old stigmas.  Nurturing the family and community promises to strengthen and repair a fragmented society.  International standards, though issued through western monitoring bodies and disciplines, are truly for all, to which Armenia as a signatory nation, has attested.  A main takeaway then is that we have a global duty of care for children; and the way we care for the vulnerable among us is reflective of our humanity.  In the end, every child of every nation deserves a safe, healthy, loving childhood where they are able to grow soundly into adulthood, ideally thriving, interacting and contributing constructively to society.

[1] The UN Refugee Agency, (2017).
us/figures-at-a-glance.html.
[2] “Child Protection,” UNICEF, (2018), http://www.unicef.am/en/articles/child-protection.
[3] Titizian, Maria, “Independence Generation: Perceptions of family and marriage,” Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Yerevan Perspective, (December 2017), 1-7.
http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/georgien/13920.pdf
[4] “2016 Trafficking in Persons Report, Armenia,” US Department of State, 2016.
https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/countries/2016/258714.htm
[5] “Report concerning the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings by Armenia,” Council of Europe, (2017), 7. https://rm.coe.int/16806ff1ad
[6]Muradyan, Anna, Armenia: Orphans Struggle to Overcome Stigma, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, (May 2016). https://iwpr.net/global-voices/armenia-orphans-struggle-overcome-stigma
[7] Hirsch, Herbert, “Defending Truth and Justice is Everybody’s Business: Commentary on NY Times Article, ‘Rohingya Recount Atrocities,’” The Zoryan Institute, (October 2017). http://zoryaninstitute.org/defending-truth-and-justice-is-everybodys-business/
[8] “Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience,” Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme, (2014), x. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr14-report-en-1.pdf
[9] “Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience,” 2.
[10] Standing, E.M., Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work (Fresno, 1957), 61.
[11] “Child Protection Index Armenia 2016,” World Vision International, in partnership with ChildPact and Network for Organisations for Children of Serbia, (2016), 30-31. childprotectionindex.org
[12] Ferrone, L. and Y. Chzhen, “Child Poverty in Armenia: National Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis, Innocenti Working Paper No. 2016-24,” UNICEF Office of Research, (2016), 9.
[13] “Armenia Multidimensional Child Poverty Report Launched,” UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti, (September 2017). https://www.unicef-irc.org/article/1446/
[14] “When Will I Get To Go Home?” Human Rights Watch. (2017), 1.
[15] Buchanan, Jane, Armenia: Children Isolated, Needlessly Separated From Families, Human Rights Watch, (February 2017).
[16] Arauz, JuanCarlos, “Who We Are,” E3: Education, Excellence, Equity, (2018). http://www.e3educate.org/
[17] Muradyan, Anna, Armenia: Orphans Struggle to Overcome Stigma, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, (May 2016). https://iwpr.net/global-voices/armenia-orphans-struggle-overcome-stigma
[18] Buchanan, Jane, Armenia: Children Isolated, Needlessly Separated From Families, Human Rights Watch, (February 2017). https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/22/armenia-children-isolated-needlessly-separated-families
[19] Gregorian, Alin. “Human Rights Watch Urges Closing Orphanages in Armenia, Integrating Disabled Children and Orphans.” The Armenian Mirror Spectator, (April 2017). https://mirrorspectator.com/2017/04/06/human-rights-watch-urges-closing-orphanages-in-armenia-integrating-disabled-children-and-orphans/
[20] Buchanan, Jane, “Armenia Should Prioritize Children Over Orphanages,” Human Rights Watch, (May 2017).
[21] Yordanyan, Olya, “Making Their Voices Heard,” ABGU, (September 2017), 19-20.
[22] Manukyan, Narek, “Independence Generation: Education, Social Aspirations and Implications for Development,” Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Yerevan Perspective, (October 2017).
[23] Paturyan, Yevgenia Jenny, “Independence Generation: Attitudes Toward Democracy and Government,” Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Yerevan Perspective, (December 2017).
[24] Havel, Václav and Wilson, Paul, The Art of the Impossible (Toronto: Knopf, 1994), xiii
[25] Titizian, Maria, “Independence Generation: Perceptions of family and marriage,” Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Yerevan Perspective, (December 2017). http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/georgien/13920.pdf
[26] Wolf, Catherine. “Empowering women in the farthest corners of Armenia,” UN
Women, (October 2017). http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2017/10/a-day-in-the-life-of-catherine-wolf
[27]Teggarty, Nina. “How Armenia Is Trying To Stop Sex-Selective Abortions,”
Huffington Post, (April 2017). https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-armenia-is-trying-to-stop-sex-selective-abortions_us_58f4d45ae4b0b9e9848d2731
[28] Pujol-Mazzini, Anna, “Armenians urged to value their women as abortions of girls skew population,” Reuters, (2017). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-armenia-women-abortion/armenians-urged-to-value-their-women-as-abortions-of-girls-skew-population-idUSKBN1CE08P
[29] “UNICEF, Armenia,” Twitter, (February 2018). https://twitter.com/unicefarmenia
[30] “When Will I Get To Go Home?” Human Rights Watch. (2017), 88.
[31] Mission East Armenia, (2017). http://missioneast.org/en/armenia/home
[32] When Will I Get To Go Home? Human Rights Watch. (2017), 87.
[33] “Early Childhood Development,” World Vision Armenia, (2018). http://www.wvi.org/armenia/early-childhood-development
[34] “About Human Development,” Human Development Reports, United Nation Development Programme, (2016). http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev
[35] “Child Protection Index Armenia 2016,” World Vision International, in partnership with ChildPact and Network for Organisations for Children of Serbia, (2016), 30-31. childprotectionindex.org
[36]Matosian M., Ishkanian A., “Heated debates around domestic violence in Armenia,” OpenDemocracy (2017). https://www.opendemocracy.net/armine-ishkanian-maro-matosian/heated-debates-around-domestic-violence-in-armenia
[37] “UN Treaties and Armenia,” United Nations Armenia, (2018). http://www.un.am/en/p/un-treaties-armenia
[38]Matosian M., Ishkanian A., “Heated debates around domestic violence in Armenia,” OpenDemocracy (2017). https://www.opendemocracy.net/armine-ishkanian-maro-matosian/heated-debates-around-domestic-violence-in-armenia