$1.5 million database for orphans and potential parents: Dealing with corruption in orphanages
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Orphanages and adoption has become a sore spot of the child protection in Kazakhstan for a number of reasons. In spring 2014, a Kazakh lawmaker Dariga Nazarbayev suggested closing down all 184 institutions involved in the care of orphans including orphanages, youth houses, group homes and Dom Malyutki orphanages for babies. The ultimate goal behind Nazarbayeva’s suggestion was ensuring that all 32,362 registered orphans and social orphans eventually have families.
But to realize Nazarbayeva’s idea, major changes are required in Kazakhstan’s adoption system. As the conventional wisdom goes, adoption of a healthy child from an orphanage is close to impossible thanks to heads of local orphanages and other officials involved in the process of adoption. Adoption of a child with health issues, too, is not an easy thing to do in Kazakhstan. The conventional wisdom would have turned into some sort of an urban legend, if it had no facts to back it up. Earlier, Deputy Prosecutor General Andrey Kravchenko talked about key problems in the Kazakhstani adoption system.