This Human Rights Watch report gives a detailed overview of the situation faced by children with disabilities in orphanages in Russia. According to the report, every child with a disability in Russia has a significant chance of ending up in a state-run orphanage. Nearly 30 percent of all Russian children with disabilities live separately from their families and communities in closed institutions. This report is based on visits by Human Rights Watch researchers to 10 orphanages in 6 regions of Russia, as well as on more than 200 interviews with parents, children, and young people currently and formerly living in institutions in these regions and 2 other regions of Russia.
One of the main findings of this report is that many children and young people with disabilities who have lived in state orphanages suffer serious abuse and neglect on the part of institution staff that impedes their development. According to the report, children described how orphanage staff beat them, used physical restraints to tie them to furniture, or gave them powerful sedatives in efforts to control behavior that staff deemed undesirable. Staff also forcibly isolated children, denied them contact with their relatives, and sometimes forced them to undergo psychiatric hospitalization as punishment. Moreover, the report highlights that children with disabilities living in state institutions may also face various forms of neglect, including lack of access to adequate nutrition, health care and rehabilitation, play and recreation, attention from caregivers, and education. In addition, a lack of adequate support and training for orphanage staff, as well as understaffing, negatively impact children’s treatment in these institutions.
According to the report, children with disabilities enrolled in institutions at a young age are unlikely to return to and reunite with their birth families, as local-level state commissions typically recommend continued institutionalization of children. The report indicates that the Russian government has failed to adequately support and facilitate adoption and fostering of children with disabilities, although these types of programs formally exist. At the age of 18 years, children with disabilities who have been placed in residential care are overwhelmingly placed in state institutions for adults with disabilities.
The report also finds that children with disabilities living in state institutions experience significant obstacles related to adoption and fostering, including: lack of government mechanisms to actively locate foster and adoptive parents for children with disabilities; lack of support for adoptive and foster families of children with disabilities; and some state officials’ negative attitudes towards children with disabilities and their active attempts to dissuade parents from adopting or fostering these children on the basis that they will be unable to care for them. While the Russian federal government has in recent years taken action to address institutionalization by developing several policies on measures to end institutionalization and provide better alternatives for children with disabilities and their families, Russia still lacks clear federal plans for implementation and monitoring.