Child Portraits Uncovered

Every Child Needs a Family

Around 4900 children in Armenia are still in orphanages and special boarding schools, away from their families. 80 percent of them have at least one parent and were placed there due to socio-economic hardships their families are facing and good conditions that orphanages offer for children.

• It is imperative to ensure that every child enjoys the right to live in a family. For that purpose, funds allocated for maintenance of orphanages should be rather directed to support socially vulnerable families or expansion of foster care, while orphanages and other care institutions where children live should be transformed into family support centers.
Featured articles

Three Different Fates, One Common Past: Armenian Orphan Asylums

10.08.2011

http://www.huliq.com/3257/three-different-fates-one-commons-past-armenian-orphan-asylums
Psychologists argue that humans are capable of forgetting happy episodes of their life, but memories of hardships remain with them through their lifetime. When you talk with the graduates of Armenian orphan asylums, you slightly shift from this argument, as their memory keeps both: their fate has taught them to preserve everything they have, especially because they do not have too much of this, and they acquire everything they have through sufferings and struggle. more...

The Victim of a Money Blackmailing System Was Doomed to Kill Her Sons

10.03.2011

http://www.huliq.com/3257/victim-money-blackmailing-system-was-doomed-kill-her-sons
On September 6, 34-year old Roza Aloyan suffocated her sons 6-year old Vardan and 4-year old Hayk with bed sheets in a small regional town in Armenia.After the cruel murder, Aloyan had planned to commit a suicide, but found she couldn’t do that. Instead, she went to the police and told them what had happened, anbd how she hung her elder son and after two hours her younger one. more...

Armenia's Impoverished Children's Homes

07.11.2011

Hasmik Hambardzumyan
Institute for War and Peace Reporting

 Children’s homes across Armenia are so poorly resourced that they struggle to provide even basic care, according to staff and other observers. Armenia’s eight state-funded homes currently house 940 children, 360 of them disabled, and share a total government allocation of under 2.5 million US dollars a year. more...

Good intentions not enough to close Armenia's orphanages

07.09.2011

http://www.huliq.com/8738/good-intentions-not-enough-close-armenias-orphanages

Original article by Liya Khojoyan, revised by Sandy Smith

The Armenian government is committed to emptying the country's orphanages by moving toward foster care and thus, bringing its institutions in line with the rest of Europe. Yet since the first steps towards that goal in 2004, they have actually grown in size. more...

Why the «Foster Family» program that offers savings for the budget is not continued: A. Grigoryan’s

06.23.2011

www.panorama.am

"Since 2006 the project for unloading the institutions that protect and care of children has been developed and implemented in order to unload the institutions and to prevent the children's access to those institutions; since 2008 until now the "Foster family "program is being implemented. Since 2008 35 children received care in foster families." more...

A. Bakhshyan: “Establishment of Children’s ombudsmen institution in Armenia is underway”

06.16.2011

www.panorama.am

 “Under the Constitution, our state is limited to basic human and civil rights and freedoms as a directly applicable law. In this context, in 1992 Armenia ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child assuming readiness to prioritize child protection issues and to include them into the national projects,” member of the Heritage parliamentary faction Anahit Bakhshyan said at the parliamentary conference of CIS, Central and Eastern Europe states on protection of the rights of vulnerable children. more...

Cristina Roccella: Family is the best place for a child to live and develop

06.01.2011

Artak Barseghyan
“Radiolur”

For four months now the Armenian Public Relations Association has been conducting “Every Child Needs a Family” campaign with the assistance of the UNICEF. The campaign is financed by the Government of Norway and UNICEF. more...

One Day in the Gyumri “Children's Home” Orphanage

05.31.2011

www.panorama.am

 The Children's Home is a well-known orphanage throughout the Republic, established in 1924 in Gyumri. The orphanage serves children ages 0-6 years old, who suffer from severe health and development problems. Although, the RA Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Issues, Mr. Filaret Berikyan, assured Panaroma.am that we could visit any orphanage without any difficulty or obstacles, the orphanage deputy director Artur Movsisyan, at first, refused to allow us to enter the orphanage and especially to meet with the children. He, only after seeing the member of the National Assembly and member of the Heritage party, Anahit Bakhshyan, gave the permission to enter the orphanage. more...

The criminal case opened in 2010 against an orphanage director was suspended according to a 2009 gen

05.31.2011

www.panorama.am

The prosecutor’s office of Shirak marz announced in 2010 that a number of organizations’ executives took care of their own interests at the expense of the children. One of these organizations is the Children’s Home orphanage in Gyumri, which according to this news, the director of the Children’s Home SNCO, Ruzanna Avagyan, did not perform her service responsibilities accordingly, and took advantage of her position in contradiction to the organization’s interest. more...

Armenia aims to replace orphanages with foster caring and adoption

04.29.2011

http://www.huliq.com/1/424-armenia-aims-replace-orphanages-foster-caring-and-adoption

The government of Armenia introduced the concept of foster care in 2004, but to this day nearly 5000 children wait in orphanages, and many of them are not eligible for adoption. more...