Post by Bozur on Feb 17, 2005 17:13:37 GMT -5
Romanian babies are exposed to trafficking
Infants dumped at hospitals are legally invisible, UNICEF says
BUCHAREST (AFP) - A high percentage of the many Romanian newborn infants abandoned at maternity hospitals each year are without identity and therefore potentially exposed to child trafficking, the UN children’s fund UNICEF has warned.
UNICEF representative Pierre Poupard said nearly 65 percent of abandoned newborns had no identity papers.
“That makes them legally invisible and therefore vulnerable to child trafficking,” he told journalists on Thursday.
UNICEF is concerned at the number of newborn babies — as many 4,000 a year — left abandoned at Romanian maternity hospitals, Poupard said.
A UNICEF study on the subject had caused surprise. “We thought the number of children being abandoned in Romania had diminished in recent years but this is evidently not the case.
“After the fall of communism, the number of children in care came down from about 100,000 in 1990 to something over 35,000 now.
“But the rate of children being abandoned, 1.8 percent of the total of newborns in 2004, is comparable to that registered in 1995.” Poupard said poverty was the main cause of mothers abandoning babies: “Half the women abandoning their children are less than 20 years of age, often illiterate and marginalized by a system generally very harsh on single mothers.”
Flawed system
Faults in Romania’s healthcare system also encouraged abandonment, he said.
“In Romanian maternity hospitals, the mother is not allowed to keep her child beside her. That makes separation easier.” Romanian authorities are fighting a battle against child trafficking, a crime that sees newborn babies sold to adoptive parents and adolescents forced into prostitution and begging in Western Europe.
“Romania remains a country from where minors are taken to become sex workers or beggars in countries like France, Italy and Spain,” Gheorghe Muscalu, a Justice Ministry official overseeing the fight against organized crime, said earlier.
“In 2003, we detained more than 200 people implicated in trading a hundred or so Romanian minors to Western Europe,” Muscalu said.
Five networks smuggling Romanian children to France were smashed in 2003.
Victims are often newborns sold to couples who want to avoid the legal channels to adopt a child.
www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news/content.asp?aid=52069