India: alarming situation for Covid-19 orphans
Audio 02:26
India has recorded more than 4,000 deaths per day this week, a figure that is arguably largely underestimated.
© AFP / Manjunath Kiran
By: Côme Bastin Follow
6 mins
With 300,000 official deaths already and undoubtedly much more in fact, India is now worried about the wave of orphans that the pandemic is leaving behind.
Several NGOs warn about trafficking and the living conditions to which children who have lost one or two parents are already exposed.
Publicity
From our correspondent in Bangalore,
WhatsApp messages to adopt children, a baby found next to his mother dead for 48 hours ... These are the news items shaking India with the second wave of Coronavirus.
Difficult to know the number of orphaned children for lack of official count.
But Anant Kumar Ashtana, lawyer in children's law, sees the increase day by day.
“
I'm getting more and more calls from people who want to adopt.
And I also see a lot of people sharing the identities of children whose parents have died on social media.
We can therefore see that in recent months, there has been a sudden increase in the number of orphans, linked to Covid-19,
”says Anant Kumar Ashtana.
Strengthen care for orphaned children
On Friday 21, the Interior Ministry urged Indian states to strengthen care systems for orphaned children during the second wave of the pandemic.
Until they sometimes start from a good intention, these messages on social networks are against the law and can promote child trafficking, explains the lawyer.
“
The peak of the second wave also corresponds to a peak of illegal adoptions in India.
However, when the legal process is not respected, no one knows who will really take care of the child.
So some can get them back for forced labor like domestic slaves.
Sometimes this can go as far as violence and sexual exploitation against children,
”warns Anant Kumar Ashtana.
Broken families
The Covid-19 also and first of all deprives the children of one of their parent and that is enough to blow up the family unit, explains Sonal Kapoor, president of the NGO Protashan which fights for children's rights.
“
Out of 650 cases that we are monitoring, only six are orphans from Covid-19.
The others are children who have lost a parent, or who have been thrown into trafficking because the family has no more money,
”says Sonal Kapoor, who continues:“ In
order to be able to eat, some prostitute their children.
We interviewed over 400 very young and very poor girls who have lost their mothers.
13% say that their fathers or brothers have started to rape them.
"
India has recorded more than 4,000 deaths per day this week, a figure that is arguably largely underestimated.
If the Covid-19 rarely kills children, its impact on Indian youth is no less catastrophic.
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India
Coronavirus
Rights of the child