Contribution to Book
Addicted to Orphans: How the Global Orphan Industrial Complex Jeopardizes Local Child Protection Systems
Conflict, Violence and Peace
(2017)
Abstract
While many scholars and activists from multiple disciplines have reported on various aspects of orphan policy and the international adoption industry, there has been little synthesis of this information and its implications for global child protection. This chapter therefore puts the pieces together to argue that the misidentification of “orphans” as a category for development and humanitarian intervention has subsequently been misappropriated by many Western individuals and charitable organizations. Promoting a discourse of orphan rescue, they foster the growth of an “orphan industrial complex.” In developing countries like Guatemala and Uganda whose children are targeted for “rescue,” the discourse and practice of “orphan rescue” is subsequently jeopardizing child protection and even driving the “production” of orphans as objects for particular kinds of intervention-counter to established international standards of child protection.
Keywords
- International adoption,
- Child protection,
- Orphans,
- Humanitarian intervention,
- Orphan rescue,
- Orphan industrial complex,
- Guatemala,
- Uganda
Disciplines
- Psychology and
- Psychiatry
Publication Date
2017
Editor
Christopher Harker, Kathrin Hörschelmann, Tracey Skelton
Publisher
Springer
Series
Geographies of Children and Young People
DOI
10.1007/978-981-287-038-4_3
Citation Information
Kristen E. Cheney and Karen Smith Rotabi. "Addicted to Orphans: How the Global Orphan Industrial Complex Jeopardizes Local Child Protection Systems" Conflict, Violence and Peace (2017) p. 89 - 107 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/karen-rotabi/5/