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Foreign orphans on the rise

Abandoned babies are an unexpected ripple effect of the flood of Ukrainian workers

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 14th, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
Adopting Viktorka could be difficult: Her nationality is unclear, as her mother had no papers.
Viktorka’s short story is perhaps not typical of orphans in the Czech Republic, but it’s part of a host of problems foreign children face when their migrant parents cannot take care of them. As tens of thousands of foreign nationals continue to seek work in the Czech Republic, the number of abandoned children may also be on the rise.
Viktorka was born toward the end of February to a married Ukrainian couple who could not to afford to keep her. “They also have a family in Ukraine, and the baby would be sort of an obstacle for them,” said Leona Koutenská, director of a Klokánek in Hostivice. Klokáneks are privately run alternatives to state orphanages.
“[Viktorka’s mother] said she was in a difficult life situation,” said Dana Vodičková, a social worker at Klokánek. “It’s a problem in the Ukrainian community because these women come here to make money and are surprised to find themselves pregnant. Many have children at home.”
The institution got Viktorka about two weeks ago, when she was just 7 days old.
The girl’s parents were likely two of the thousands of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic working for money to send home to their families. According to Viktor Plietnikov, first secretary of consular affairs, up to 110,000 Ukrainians live here legally and as many as 50,000 live here illegally.
The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry says 43,000 Ukrainians have work permits in the Czech Republic and that thousands more work here illegally. A ripple effect of this situation is babies who were not part of the plan.
“[Since] the number of foreigners living in the Czech Republic is on the rise, the number of abandoned children of foreign nationality is also rising,” ministry spokesman Daniel Hovorka said. “The problem started with a rising number of Ukrainian citizens migrating to the Czech Republic, roughly since the second half of the ’90s,” he added.
Czech orphanages now take care of dozens of Ukrainian children. According to Hovorka, the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry has information about roughly 40 Ukrainian orphans in Czech institutions, but the real number may be higher.
Not all the children are taken care of by medical or educational institutions, so are not included in official statistics.
Marie Vodičková runs the 16 Klokáneks in the Czech Republic. They currently house four Ukrainians. That number may seem small now, but she estimates the number of Ukrainian orphans will increase. “It might be becoming a problem,” she said.
But the bigger dilemma is what to do with these children. Unlike in some countries, babies born on Czech soil do not automatically receive citizenship. Adopting them can take years and mean navigating a web of red tape. Ukraine and the Czech Republic are now working on a deal that would smooth international adoption between the two countries.
The current bilateral agreement does not allow either to make decisions about adoption or guardianship of children from the other country, Horvorka said. “There is a group of children who are in pre-guardian care or pre-adoption care,” he said.
Czech and Ukrainian officials met in February to work out the details of a protocol that would enable Czech courts to make decisions regarding the adoption of Ukrainian children living here. The protocol has to be passed by both countries.
“A new agreement would help a lot,” said Dana Vodičková, a social worker.
Meanwhile, what to do with Viktorka? By law, her mother has to wait six weeks after birth to consent to adoption. So far, she hasn’t come to visit.
Assuming that in a few weeks Viktorka is available for adoption, another problem arises: Her nationality is unclear; her mother had no documents. Viktorka doesn’t have Czech citizenship and without these papers she might not qualify as a Ukrainian national. She hasn’t been issued a birth certificate yet.
One option, according to Marie Vodičková, is for officials to seek asylum for Viktorka. This option has been pursued in the case of several other children of foreign nationality.
If Klokánek seeks, and the Interior Ministry grants, asylum for her then she could be adopted by Czech parents. The asylum process takes about nine months, Marie Vodičkova said.
If Viktorka doesn’t receive asylum, Klokánek will start looking for adoptive parents to care for her and field the bureaucratic hassles it will take to legally adopt her.
In any case, she will be in Klokánek for at least two months, Dana Vodičková said, and people there are not worried — Viktorka is very adoptable.
As Koutenská says, beautiful blond, blue-eyed girls do not have problems finding homes.
Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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