On Odessa streets, children from all over Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Prydnestovye and Russia coexist. “According to…official statistics about three thousand children live in the streets of Odessa. According to the words of the specialists it is just a top of the iceberg”, says Tatiana Semikop, Chief of Criminal Militia on Youth Affairs. No one has real data on the number of homeless children in Ukraine, but the country is overflowing with a third wave of child homelessness. During the first two waves of the Civil War and Second World War, children became orphans when their parents died. The majority of modern homeless childrens’ parents are alive. An awful concept has appeared in Ukraine: “social orphans,” children who in theory have somewhere to go, but who will go never there.
Burn magazine has a brief essay and a gallery of thirty photos by Michal Novotny.
I live in Kazakhstan and I can say that this is problem of many ExUSSR cities :(
ReplyDeleteQuite the contrast from the previous post. Over a hundred years later, and "the worst of times" have gotten even uglier...
ReplyDeleteYes, I purposely put those two posts in juxtaposition with one another.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
ReplyDeleteTo emphasize the contrast in the lives of the street children vs. the children of the oligarchs.
ReplyDelete