Orphan tourism under the hammer

10 Sep 2011 2045 | Cambodia Travel News

The Cambodian government on Thursday introduced guidelines aiming to better protect orphans and vulnerable children after childcare experts voiced alarm over an unregulated boom in orphanages.

The decision follows media reports that orphanages were being used as tourist attractions and volunteer tourism was causing more damage than good to children’s welfare in the long run.

UNICEF’s Cambodia Representative Richard Bridle said the measures were an important step, but warned that the country needed to “build capacity and resources” to carry them out.

The UN agency had earlier expressed concern about the country’s poor and vulnerable children after learning that over the past six years, the number of orphanages in the impoverished nation has almost doubled to 269.

Only one in 10 of these are funded by the state, it found, while the rest rely on charitable donations to survive, including gifts from tourists who are encouraged to visit orphanages, volunteer there or watch cultural shows performed by the children.

Childcare specialists say they fear that this kind of orphan tourism has contributed to the growth in orphanages and encouraged the institutionalisation of poor children.

The new standards emphasise that placing children in institutions should be “a last resort”, after UNICEF said earlier this year that three quarters of the 12,000 children in Cambodia’s orphanages had at least one living parent.

Cambodian Social Affairs Minister Ith Sam Heng told AFP the guidelines, drafted with the help of UNICEF and other children’s rights groups, were “very important” in helping to keep families together.

“We hope that these standards will improve the situation of our at-risk children,” he said.

Source - ttrweekly