Prisoners of Childhood: Orphans and Economic Dependency

Abstract

Children who have lost one or both parents are usually among society’s most vulnerable members and dependent on wider society for their safe passage through childhood. The customary estimate is that, in developing countries, the 2 per cent of children who are orphaned can be absorbed into the extended family and community. However, when the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) announced in 2001 that orphan numbers would increase by 200 per cent because of HIV/AIDS mortality, it was clear that finding the necessary resources to protect orphaned children must be a priority for the international community (UNAIDS, 2001). Although this unprecedented rise in the number of children living without parental care appears to be a problem for children, in reality it highlights a historical tendency for ‘the problem of orphans’ to be an economic issue for adults.