JOHANNESBURG, 27 June 2007 (PlusNews) - The term 'AIDS orphan'
is misleading. It suggests the child itself is HIV-positive, which invariably is
not the case, and perpetuates the stigma and discrimination experienced by
AIDS-affected children.
The term 'orphans and vulnerable children' is
now more commonly used to better express the devastating impact of the pandemic
on households, even before parents die. The definition of an orphan is generally a child under the age of 18 who has lost
either one or both parents (a double orphan). Surveys suggest the age of orphans
is fairly consistent: around 50 percent are 10-14 years old; 35 percent are 5-9
years old, and 15 percent are 0-4 years old. Tragically, children who are
HIV-positive do not survive long enough to make up a sizeable proportion of the
numbers.
In Angola, Malawi and Zambia, the majority of orphans are found
in urban centres; in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and South
Africa, parentless children live mainly in the countryside, reflecting the
migration of sick parents back to their villages to die.
Most orphans
stay with their surviving parent, but women are much more likely to take on the
responsibility of their own children as well as other orphans. Fathers are
usually more prepared to look after orphaned sons than daughters, and
grandparents are the safety net when all else fails.
AIDS impoverishes
families, and female-headed households are the poorest of all. Productive assets
like draught animals are often sold, so land under cultivation may drop,
exacerbating the crisis.
Poverty makes it so much worse
Plummeting family incomes and the additional work expected of
children reduce their chances of attending school, while anxiety over sick
adults and the trauma of loss may mean they don’t do as well in class as their
peers. "It is common for teachers to report that they find orphaned children
daydreaming, coming to school infrequently, arriving at school unprepared and
late, or being nonresponsive in the classroom," a United States Congressional
report commented.
The psychological impact of a loss of a parent is
heightened if siblings are separated when families share rearing duties.
Parcelled out to new households, they may feel they do not receive enough love
or attention. Girl children are at increased risk of sexual abuse, but are under
pressure to remain silent because they have nowhere else to turn.
New
research suggests that poverty is the over-riding factor that bedevils care of
orphans and non-orphans alike. A study in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Province,
testing some of the commonly held assumptions about orphan welfare, found there
was no significant difference in how the extended kin cared for children in a
household, whether or not they had lost a biological parent.
According
to Timothy Quinlan, research director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal's
Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division: "The welfare of a child can be
very bad just because the parents are poor."
Studies on AIDS-affected
children have tended to be anecdotal, often focusing on the perceived threat
orphans pose to society as an angry and maladjusted generation. What
psychosocial research is available suggests that children in AIDS-affected
families exhibit more symptoms of depression, anxiety, psychosomatic reactions
and post-traumatic stress disorder; they are more likely to have low self-esteem
than display aggressive behaviour.
Poverty deepens their vulnerability:
a rapid assessment in Zambia found a high proportion of orphans among child sex
workers and street children. Child labour exploitation is another area of
concern. The problem is not the threat parentless children pose to the
community, but rather the dangers that societal neglect and discrimination pose
to them.
What is to be done?
The Convention on
the Rights of the Child recognises children as rights holders, and affirms that
governments have the principal responsibility in ensuring that those rights are
protected.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has highlighted
five priority areas to meet those goals:
• Strengthen the
capacity of families - rather than institutions - to protect and
care for orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV and
AIDS
• Mobilise and improve community-based
responses
• Ensure access to essential services for orphans,
particularly education
• Ensure that governments protect the most
vulnerable children
• Raise awareness to create a supportive
environment for affected children
All these remedial actions need to
work alongside far broader access to antiretroviral drugs to keep parents alive
for longer, and more effective prevention programmes to guard against HIV
infection in the first place.