YEREVAN. - On the International Children’s Day, it’s worthwhile remembering also the category of the growing generation, which is especially in need of protection and care. This category includes the children who are for some reason deprived of parental care.

A so-called ‘centralized registration of adopted children…’ is kept, which included 117 children last year. It also included 18 babies below six months…

It can be concluded that all these children have no parents, however, in reality everything is exactly the other way round. From the aforementioned contingent, 47 children have both parents.

The rest have either one parent, or their ‘Mom and Dad’ have been deprived of parental right or care. In fact, there are many single mothers among those ‘parents.’ Ultimately only one teenager turned out to be a full orphan according to his social position.

Last year 244 people expressed a wish to adopt a child, among them 128 foreigners (one of whom resided in Armenia), i.e. over half of the potential adoptive parents proved to be foreigners.  

Apparently, merely a wish is not enough for adopting a child. Adoptive parents have to meet a number of harsh conditions (criteria). That’s why the number of adopted children is disproportionately small – only 46 children - as compared to the registered ones.

The age of the children also plays an important role for adoptive parents. Thus, 18 babies of 6 months were registered for adoption, but this age group was absent among the adopted children. At the same time exactly half of the adopted children (23) belonged to the age group of 1-6 years.

According to last year statistics, Armenian orphan homes had 951 fosterlings, over half of which were children with disabilities.