files

7.1 Challenges of orphan tourism
– examples from Cambodia and South Africa
The media has recently reported heavily on volunteering at orphanages in Cambodia 193 .
In June 2013, Swedish Radio programme Kaliber revealed that the UK-based Projects
Abroad group, which has an office in Stockholm, had sent a volunteer for two weeks to Siem
Reap without checking references or making sure that police records were obtained prior to
departure from Sweden. In Siem Reap, the volunteer (a journalist in real life), had been left
alone with 24 children and had the opportunity to take some of them outside the orphanage
unsupervised. After this incident, Projects Abroad in Sweden cancelled for the time being
their volunteer opportunities with children at residential care facilities. 194
The case of Cambodia is interesting in many respects. The country developed minimum standards
in its Policy on Alternative Care for Children in 2006 and Minimum Standards on Alternative
Care for Children in 2008. Those standards say that institutional care should be the last
resort, and that children are best taken care of in their families or in their community. However,
this does not accord with the fact that the number of residential care facilities has increased by
75 per cent to 269 (11,945 children) in 2010. Children in residential care run the risk of “clinical
personality disorders, growth and speech delays, and an impaired ability to re-enter society later
in life.” In addition, the children miss their families, and become dependent, showing affection
in abundance. They feel that they are not getting the love that they deserve or that the love is
unequally distributed. Some do not receive the education they were promised and worry about
their future. Furthermore, government research has found that almost half of all children that
were placed in residential care had parents or extended family. The biggest reason appears to
be the inability of parents to provide for food and education (which constitutes 26.5 per cent
of non-food expenses) for their children. They believe that the best option they have is to put
them in residential care, rather than community-based care. 195
Luke Gracie, Manager, Program for the Protection of Children (3PC), Friends International
says that parents sign a form of consent with the orphanage to leave their child there.
Whether it is informed consent is another issue. 196 Some parents have even been lured into
signing an adoption agreement, which in practice makes it extremely difficult for the family
to make the child return to the family. 197
As government ministries have Memorandums of Understanding with local NGOs, residential
care facilities need to recruit the children staying with them since no NGO will allow
children to be sent there. An interviewee who wants to remain anonymous says that the
worst is that the care homes remove the children from their families, and that all their rights
are being violated 198 .
In this context, overseas donors have become interested in funding residential care facilities,
contributing to their growth in number. It has also made residential centres that are located
close to the tourist streets dependent on international funding, and the children are in some
cases playing an active part in raising money for residential care by dancing, crafting souvenirs,
posing with tourists on photos and interacting with donors. 199 Rana Flowers from Unicef
Cambodia said in an interview with Kaliber that the way that children are used is a clear
case of child labour in some instances 200 . There have been cases in Cambodia where people
are able simply to walk in for a day and volunteer at an orphanage without anyone checking
their references or police records. Alone and without supervision, they have been able to
take children outside the orphanages, which makes these an attractive target for child
sex offenders 201 .
No child’s play | 37