Children, the right of abandoned minors to be children and when it is possible to promote their return to their family of origin

ROMA – Restoring the right of abandoned minors to be children, initiating where possible their return to their family of origin: this is one of the challenges that Ai.Bi. launched in Bolivia. Of the 299 minors welcomed into orphanages, in the first half of 2024, 35 were reintegrated into their families and 8 were adopted by Bolivian families.

Ai.Bi.’s work in seven orphanages. As part of the International Cooperation project “Beyond the Nest – multi-dimensional intervention for vulnerable minors”, co-financed by the Commission for International Adoptions and by the supporters of the project “Support the children of an orphanage in Bolivia from a distance”, Ai.Bi. is currently working in seven orphanages in Bolivia carrying out various activities in particular to promote the deinstitutionalization of children, trying to reintegrate them into their families or, where the conditions do not exist, support national adoption.

The data for 2024. Analyzing the data of the last 6 months, we can see that out of a total of 299 children welcomed in the seven orphanages followed by Ai.Bi. in Bolivia, 66 have left the facility. 53% of these children (35 minors) have been reintegrated into their families of origin, 12% (8) have found a new family through adoption. These data show that out of almost 300 minors, 43 have returned to live in a family context: 35 minors reintegrated into their families and 8 adopted by Bolivian families! A positive sign in the direction of de-institutionalization.

The problem of teenagers. 35% of the children who left the institution were neither adopted nor reintegrated into their families: these minors were transferred to another center or left the protection system when they reached adulthood. The possibility of adoption for these children decreases significantly with increasing age, as demonstrated by the increase in transfers.

But certain reinsertions leave problems open. A particularly significant figure concerns the number of adolescents reintegrated into their families of origin: often these young people have spent many years institutionalized and the protection system tries, at the last moment, to restore their right to a family life. However, this reintegration often occurs without resolving the problems that had led them to the centers, making the reintegration process fragile and potentially unstable. Proof of this is the fact that, from a more in-depth analysis, it emerges that 8% of national adoptions and 5.7% of family reunifications are unsuccessful. The absence of continuous support policies for families makes it difficult to guarantee stability in the long term and there is a fear that the percentage of failures may increase over time.

The Child Protection System in Bolivia. In recent years, the child protection system in Bolivia has undergone major changes. De-institutionalization is now a widely recognized concept and no reception center is considered an ideal place for a child to grow up. Organizations such as Ai.Bi. have played a key role in this paradigm shift. Despite this progress, there is still a long way to go. Adopting older children brings increasingly complex challenges for families and it is essential to offer support before, during and after the process to avoid failure. Furthermore, there is a clear lack of effective public policies for strengthening families. In-depth research on family reunification at the national level could help to highlight these gaps.

The Friends of Children Association. It is a movement of families that has been operating since 1986 in Italy and in over 30 countries around the world (in Eastern Europe, America, Africa and Asia) to give every abandoned child a family and guarantee his right to be a child. Every day, all over the world, Friends of Children struggle to combat the emergency of abandonment: another of the many emergencies that, unlike hunger, disease and wars in the so-called “developing countries”, is common to populations in other latitudes of the world, and which has assumed truly alarming dimensions.

200 million abandoned children: what is missing to feel like “children”. According to an estimate based on a report by Unicef a few years ago, there are at least 200 million abandoned children in the world. In Italy, there are over 30 thousand minors “outside the family”. Friends of Children intervenes where abandonment is evident: in orphanages, in institutions, in assistance centres… in all those situations in which assistance allows them to “survive”, but not to live fully, because they lack the love of a family that makes them feel truly like “children”.