Disabled and Children's Rights
Currently, an estimated 2 million children live in Russian orphanages, with another 4 million children on the streets. According to a 1998 Human Rights Watch report, "Russian children are abandoned to the state at a rate of 113,000 a year for the past two years, up dramatically from 67,286 in 1992. Of a total of more than 600,000 children classified as being 'without parental care,' as many as one-third reside in institutions, while the rest are placed with a variety of guardians. From the moment the state assumes their care, orphans in Russia – of whom 95 percent still have a living parent – are exposed to shocking levels of cruelty and neglect." Once officially labelled as retarded, Russian orphans are "warehoused for life in psychoneurological institutions. In addition to receiving little to no education in such institutions, these orphans may be restrained in cloth sacks, tethered by a limb to furniture, denied stimulation, and sometimes left to lie half-naked in their own filth. Bedridden children aged five to seventeen are confined to understaffed lying-down rooms as in the baby houses, and in some cases are neglected to the point of death." Life and death of disabled children in the state institutions was described by writer Ruben Gallego. Despite these high numbers and poor quality of care, recent laws have made adoption of Russian children by foreigners considerably more difficult.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Russia
Famous quotes containing the words disabled and, disabled, children and/or rights:
“We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick ... the trade union for the nation as a whole.”
—Edward Heath (b. 1916)
“That myth—that image of the madonna-mother—has disabled us from knowing that, just as men are more than fathers, women are more than mothers. It has kept us from hearing their voices when they try to tell us their aspirations . . . kept us from believing that they share with men the desire for achievement, mastery, competence—the desire to do something for themselves.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself.... It seems unfair. You can’t assume the responsibility for everything you do—or don’t do.”
—Simone De Beauvoir (1908–1986)
“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)