Battling to save the lost children of Ceausescu

Date: 05/09/02

Romania's efforts to help its abandoned children will be key to the country's bid to join the EU. David Cronin reports from the former dictatorship.

IULIAN is lying sideways in his cot. A bewildered look registers on his face as his big eyes catch a strange face peering down. It seems he isn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

Born in May last year, Iulian is one of 200 abandoned children in Placement Centre No. 1, Timisoara. The institution in this western Romanian city is brimming with cuddly toys. And it has a playground painted cheerily in red, yellow and blue.

Yet there is still something ineffably sad about the place.

The sight of babies just a few weeks old, sleeping soundly under a Smurfs' duvet, ought to be something positive and life-affirming. But then you realise they will probably never know their natural mother or father.

Less than ten minutes' walk from the centre is perhaps the most important site in Romania's recent history. At first glance the building looks like just another nondescript apartment block. Then you notice the stained glass window on its first floor and plaque proclaiming its pivotal role in the 1989 revolution, which culminated in the execution of reviled dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena on Christmas Day.

It was here that cleric Laszlo Tokes, a member of Romania's ethnic Hungarian minority, resisted attempts by the Bucharest government to send him into exile. Tokes, a pastor with the Calvinist Reformed church, had been one of Ceausescu's most trenchant critics, denouncing the man some called Drac (the devil) for his hostility to Hungarians and his 'systemisation' policy of razing whole villages.

Tokes ignited protests against his imminent eviction by delivering an anti-Ceausescu sermon on 15 December 1989. Security forces fought with demonstrators over the next four days, before the army dramatically switched sides and supported them. Then the death knell for the tyrant was sounded in Bucharest on 20 December as workers turned against him during a rally which was supposed to demonstrate he still enjoyed popular approval. A day later he and Elena (his deputy prime minister) were arrested as they attempted to flee the country.

For international observers, the most shocking manifestation of Ceausescu's despotism was the cruel neglect of the nation's children. Eager for Romania to have an expanding population, he put pressure on couples to produce large families by banning contraception and abortion. The result was that parents had more children than they could afford to feed. For most there was no real alternative to placing the unwanted babies with one of the 700-plus centres throughout the country. The Western press often dubbed these 'orphanages' but the parents of most of the children inside them were still alive.

In the months after the revolution, the world discovered there were about 170,000 children living in these Dickensian institutions.

Food, medicine and fuel were scarce; malnutrition and illness were rife. Most centres lacked trained staff to cope with the flood of human misery under their command. Children who screamed, cried or even banged their heads against the wall for attention were ignored.

Romania today is still struggling to come to terms with Ceausescu's legacy. The European Commission has repeatedly urged Bucharest to invest greater vigour into improving its childcare facilities. Progress is being made. Slowly.

Estimates of the number of abandoned children in the country vary from 60,000 to 90,000. In a bid to improve their plight, the government recently published long-awaited draft legislation on child protection, due to be debated in its national parliament in the next few weeks.

Vasile Puscas, Romania's chief negotiator with the EU, wants the laws to bring tangible benefits. 'What happened to our kids was a tragedy,' he says.

The new laws are due to set out the circumstances under which Romanian children may be adopted.

Thousands of foreigners adopted children during the 1990s but a moratorium was placed on international adoptions last year. At that time about 3,500 foreigners were believed to be in the process of adopting a Romanian child.

The moratorium followed concerns raised by child welfare campaigner and Liberal MEP Emma Nicholson that child traffickers were exploiting sometimes lax controls and that inadequate procedures were leading to the auctioning of babies. Nicholson said infants were being treated like commodities, transported from the country for fees of up to €50,000. 'Money reduced a child to a bag of sugar,' she recently observed.

Some children simply went missing.

The new legislation aims to turn foreign adoptions into measures of last resort. Advertising of adoption services and the charging of fees relating to adoptions will be forbidden. Foreigners wishing to adopt will be required to live in the country for 18 months. And there will be close monitoring of how adopted children take to their new families.

Prime Minister Adrian Nastase and his government are seeking to place as many abandoned children as possible with Romanian foster families.

This will consolidate a process already under way. Government data indicates that the number of institutionalised children for whom foster parents were found within Romania rose from 12,000 to 37,500 in 1997-2001.

Just over 1,100 abandoned children in Timisoara and the surrounding Timis county were moved from institutions to families last year.

Additionally, there were 58 approvals for national and 24 for foreign adoptions.

By the end of 2001, though, 1,468 children were still living in centres in Timis, a decline of only 43 from the beginning of the year. 'There is an interest [among local families in adopting children],' said one staff member in the Timisoara placement centre. 'But unfortunately we can't find enough families.'

Herbert Grün, director of the Timisoara branch of Catholic charity Federatia Caritas, feels substantially higher resources need to be allocated to abandoned children. In some cases just €15 per month goes to helping an abandoned child. 'The authorities in this region are very well organised, but they do not have enough money,' he says.

Grün's organisation, which has found homes for some 90 children, depends on donations from countries like Austria, Germany and Italy.

The government would probably like to spend more but its hands are tied by an agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Nastase has committed his administration to maintain strict budgetary discipline in a drive to bring inflation down to 22 by this December - a drop of 8 from last year.

Although no charges are levied on Romanians wishing to adopt (this partly explains a 50 rise in the numbers opting to do so since the moratorium on foreign adoptions), the government will have little scope to offer financial help for families taking the children.

The EU has also identified children as one of the main groups it wants to aid in the funding it allocates to Romania. About €10 million was granted under the Union's Phare programme for the 2001 financial year to a project on 'strengthening and diversification' of the country's child protection activities.

The measures financed included the establishment of child welfare schemes at a local level and aid for the National Agency for the Protection of Children's Rights (which was formed in 1999).

The €10m sounds a huge sum, but far higher amounts have been channelled to other projects under Phare. For instance, some 30 of the programme's €299 million budget for Romania last year was earmarked for building up political institutions to help them prepare for EU accession.

Nevertheless, Gabriela Dobru, a programme coordinator with Save the Children in Bucharest, believes both the EU and the Romanian government are demonstrating genuine commitment to improving the lot of abandoned children.

During the past decade, she says, the state has gradually shown greater willingness to work with non-governmental organisations. The new legislation is a case in point as her office has been actively consulted on its drafting.

Furthermore she points to close cooperation on providing training to teenagers who are due to leave placement centres and fend for themselves.

'For some time the authorities have been working in collaboration with NGOs much more to improve skills,' she adds. 'We're helping with vocational courses so that these teenagers will be able to find a job.'

Earlier this year a leaked memo to the European Commission, reportedly drafted by US diplomats in Brussels, warned that some Congressmen in Washington could make unfavourable noises about Romania's plan to join NATO this winter if obstacles to international adoptions aren't cleared.

The White House has subsequently insisted that it has no plans to link this issue to Romania's hopes for entering the military alliance at NATO's Prague summit in November.

MEP Emma Nicholson has similarly indicated she does not believe the child welfare issue should scupper Romania's NATO membership hopes.

Yet the memo's publication is indicative of the rumblings of discontent among some child welfare advocates. The Foundation for American Assistance for Romania has argued that foreign families are needed, particularly for children aged five to 12, for whom the authorities struggle to find suitable homes domestically.

The Commission is expected to welcome steps taken by Bucharest in dealing with Ceausescu's legacy in its report on Romania's EU entry bid for 2002.

But it is also likely that it will remind Romania that even greater efforts are needed to improve the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens so that infants such as Iulian can have the prospect of a decent life.

Major feature. Romania's efforts to help its abandoned children will be key to the country's bid to join the EU.