This article from France 24 shares the story of Visinel Balan, who grew up in an orphanage in Romania in 1987 as "one of the 'Decretei' or 'children of the decree': children abandoned by poorer families as a result of the natalist policies of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu" when he was two months old. "The scars of those institutions, exposed to the world in the 1990s through horrifying news images of emaciated children in caged beds, have still not fully healed for Balan," says the article. Balan is now a lawyer and head of an NGO called Voice of Abandoned Children.
