The global estimates of 2015 show the range of 3.18 million to 9.42 million children separated from family and living in institutes.    UNICEF, 2017 shows global estimates of approximately 2.7 million children between ages of 0 and 17, are living in residential care. The data of global institutionalized children, mentioned by Desmond et al in their publication, puts South Asia as the region of highest child separation with 1.3 million children living in institutional care.  Nepal’s national living standard survey mentioned 11.1% (2940,889) of all children under 15 are separated from their families.  There are varied range of places where children are living separated from their parents, government registered care homes, employee place, boarding schools, non-registered orphanage, religious institutions etc.  Nepal has over the last two decades seen the explosion of private boarding schools.  2010/2011, Living Standard Survey shows that 27% of children attend private boarding schools, the residential schools. The recent official numbers of children living in 533 registered institutions are 15,564 in Nepal.

 Among the children in institution, a large majority of them have parents. In Nepal, residential care sites majority of them  are dominantly run by lessqualified staff in uncontrolled and un-protective environments, housing children from the poorest and most vulnerable segments of society. Over 80 years of research demonstrates that growing up in an institution harms the physical, emotional, mental health and well-being of children. Children raised in institutions are 10 times more likely to be involved in prostitution, 40 times more likely to have a criminal record and shockingly, 500 times more likely to commit suicide. Besides all the personals costs, a child has to pay being separated from his/her parents, it also has societal consequences, as these children risk been deprived of adulthood as engaged citizens contributing in different areas of society.

Child separation is a relatively new phenomenon in Nepal, with roots back to the 10-year civil war in Nepal, which ended in 2006. During this time, many rural remote districts were focal points for the conflict between the Maoist forces and the government. Schools became battlegrounds from which resources were re-directed for military purposes, strikes and closures were commonplace.  Children were forcibly conscripted by Maoist rebels into armed groups. These factors, along with the already existing high levels of poverty and food insecurity, created fertile ground for traffickers to prey on vulnerable families. Traffickers often portrayed themselves as boarding school representatives. They made promises to parents about modern schools and safe living conditions. However, instead of being taken to educational institutions, most of these children were institutionalized as orphans in under-resourced children's homes in urban areas where it was not uncommon for their identities to be changed, records falsified or destroyed. Additionally, many homes and livelihoods were destroyed by the 2015 earthquakes this has compounded vulnerable families to trafficking. 

During the war years, a group of orphanages were given authority to process inter-country adoptions leading to a drastic increase in the number of paper orphans being adopted overseas. Huge profits were believed to be made by traffickers and brokers by charging well-intentioned foreigners to adopt a child whom they believed was an orphan, but, in reality, still had parents living in remote areas of Nepal. In 2010 ,many western governments suspended inter-country adoption from Nepal, a ban which in the main remains in place today. With these restrictions traffickers and profiteers had to find new ways of making money from children. The methods and networks used by the traffickers during the conflict were effective and are still in intact today, now they facilitate the transport of children to orphanages for the purpose of making a profit from foreign individual donations, voluntarists. Many of them also receives support from local NGOs and INGOs. Unprotected these children are vulnerable to institutional abuse of all kinds and to further trafficking to the labor market or sex or organ industry. In 2017 child trafficking to orphanages in Nepal was officially recognized and highlighted in the US State Departments Annual Trafficking in Persons Report. Similarly, the Australian government has announced a new national campaign to divert volunteers from orphanages that exploit “fake orphans” for profit in Nepal.

Nepal has one of the fastest growing Christian communities in world, while many faith-based missions are positively assisting the people of Nepal, a group of Christian run orphanages motivated by religious conversion are in operation across the country. This group also orchestrates the trafficking of 'paper orphans', i.e. false records are created to portray them as having deceased parents. Once a child is taken from a village ,their communities are discouraged to seek contact with them.  Beside this phenomenon, there are other cultural practices which encourage families to send their children to religious institutions.  Monastery (Buddhist institute), Ashram (Hindu institute) are the common institutions where children are sent to study the religious schooling as residential students. 

Children’s rights to parental care has not yet promoted as other child rights in Nepal. Rather, it is accepted as normal phenomenon of sending children away for their better future most importantly for education. The three factors causing the loss of parental rights to such a large number of Nepalese children are Poverty, Parental Perspective and Weak Child Protection System of Nepal.  Nepal as 28th poorest country in the world and a least developed country in the world, 21.6% of the. Nepalese population live under the poverty line.  The parental belief that children receive better living condition in institution to get access to better standards of education to improve life opportunities is making separation a social norm.  As signatory to the CRC, Nepal government has formulated child protection measure to prevent the unnecessary separation. However, the weak national child protection system is not been able to be fully functional to ensure the unnecessary institutionalization of children due to the reason of poverty alone. It has also not been able to fully protect children from the harm of institutions.

With these multidimensions of child separation, the promotion and protection of children’s rights to parental care have been overlooked. Understanding the local context and the importance of protecting child from this unnecessary event, CWISH has started its mission to promote parental rights from 2010. Started with a research study in partnership with KAMCO, CWISH identified the types of separation, the driving factors and assessed the intervention on protecting children fights to parental care. With this evidential information, CWISH shaped its activities to promote the rights of parental care in Dhading from 2014 to 2018 with different projects in association with ATOS and KAMCO. In this run, a need of information seeking and sharing platform on this important aspect of child rights has emerged.

This resource hub is designed to provide resources on various aspect of child separation. It includes varied resources related to child separation phenomena.  It includes child rights conventions, Nepal law and act and Nepal’s social protection services for families to promote and protect the rights of children to parental care. It provides lived experiences of children and parents in separation, articles, research study papers on harms of separation, videos and documentary related to the issue of institutionalization and pathway to deinstitutionalization. It also hosts a public discussion forum to create a platform of queries, curiosity and collaboration to ensure that all Nepali children grow in the natural environment of love, care, socialization and understanding of their families.