Iraqi Orphans

It is extremely difficult to calculate the number of orphans in Iraq. Estimates range from 6,500 to 5 million.1 A few factors that make the gathering of statistics so confusing: Islamic society considers it shameful to abandon children to public care, traditionally they are adopted by extended family. Public records are currently very difficult to maintain. Poverty levels make it so that many children are willing to work in the street and will not tell people where they live regardless of whether or not they have a care-giver. There are multiple definitions for the word orphan: a child who has lost both parents, a child whose father has died and whose mother has remarried (Iraq does not allow adoption in these situations), a child without an adequate care-giver.

In early 2006, The Washington Post reported that the number of children in orphanages has only increased from 400 to 1,000, according to government statistics. A 2007 NPR report on orphans cited a U.N. statistic from 2006, which said that there were over 40,000 children living in Iraqi orphanages. 2 The Washington Post described the orphanages as clean and as having luxury items like sports equipment, televisions, or computers. NPR described many orphanages as lacking basic resources. Orphanages are usually segregated by sex. Orphanages with foreign sponsorship are often targeted because of their well-equipped facilities and therefore, are not necessarily the safest places for children. Since Iraq has become so dangerous many organizations have abandoned their work. Therefore, an orphanage may only offer temporary shelter. 3

Many orphans seem to have found care in situations like the home of Dumoh Mizher, a 31- year-old Shiite widow, one of three women who care for 15 children left fatherless. Mizher's husband and two of his brothers were killed in 2005 Sunni Arab insurgents broke into their small shop and shot all three point-blank. The New York Times describes the house, “children spilled through the doorway of the spare cinder-block house whose empty windows looked out onto a small pen with a goat. Framed photographs of the three dead men were set high on the wall, not far from portraits of Shiite saints.”4

Orphans who are less fortunate sleep in the streets. Near hotels or at busy intersections, they try to sell small amenities, such as colored boxes of tissues. The compensation for this type of work is usually food. Some are used as sex slaves, prostitutes, drug runners or spies.5

In general, even children with parents struggle. Soldier Jonathan Powers reported:

Night patrols noticed children as young as eight years old breaking curfew and sleeping outside the propane station so they would be the first in line to purchase their rations of propane. Propane is the main cooking and heating fuel in Iraq and is hard to find. These young boys' parents were forcing them to spend the night at the propane shop so they could be first in line to buy cans and then sell them on the black market. When the patrols discovered this, they forced the boys home by following them as they kicked their propane cans down the street. On most occasions we found angry parents greeting their sons, whom they had sent out on the streets at night.6


Since the 2003 invasion the government has encouraged private schools to open because it does not have enough money to maintain public schools.7 Therefore, it is very difficult for children who are not wealthy to attend school and more profitable for them to work in the streets. Many of the teachers were fired from schools during the purging and arrests of the Baathists after Saddam's fall. The new teachers, brought in by the Shiite-dominated government, are generally religious and get their jobs through association. They are often unqualified. Over a million dollars has been dedicated to rebuilding schools bombed during the invasion, but the American company contracted, the Bechtel Corporation, has done a less-than minimal job. Moreover, many school buildings in the more dangerous provinces are used by the American military as combat posts. In the southern provinces schools have become hideouts for militia and death squads.8



(Footnotes)

1http://www.baghdadorphanage.org/page5.htm8il

2Jamie, Taraby. “Help for Iraqi Orphans Falls on Charities.” NPR. April 14,2007.

3http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101526_pf.html

4Tavernise, Sabrina. “Iraqi Charities Plant the Seed of a Civil Society.” The New York Times. May 23, 2006.

5http://www.turks.us/article~story~20030612080108322.htm

6Powers. Jonathan. “Iraq's Youth in a Time of War.” SAIS Review. Washington: Summer 2006.

7http://121contact.typepad.com/my_weblog/the_project_starts/index.html and Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-fadhily. “Education Under Siege from Primary School to College.” Inter-Press Services. November 18, 2006.

8Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-fadhily. “Education Under Siege from Primary School to College.” Inter-Press Services. November 18, 2006.