The Numbers

A friend asked me today if I knew a good website that listed orphan statistics worldwide. Of course that sent me on a quest to find one. There is a lot of contention over orphan statistics. This website gives one view of the situation.

Here's the problem. UNICEF, which is the United Nations' arm tasked with protecting children, estimates the number of orphans in the world at 163 million. For some reason, they count children who still have one parent as orphans. That's kind of a useless parameter. This measuring gauge does not take into account the involvement of that surviving parent. So, for example, a child living with her biological mother would be listed as an orphan, the same as a child who has been living in an orphanage her entire life despite the fact that her biological father is still technically alive. That classification makes absolutely no sense to me.

Apparently, if you only count the children who have lost both parents, the number 'shrinks' to 13 million (still a bafflingly large number). But that, of course, doesn't take into account the massive numbers of abandoned children who may have a living parent (or even two) but are languishing in orphanages.

And, in the US, the foster care system rarely deals with textbook orphans (children who have lost both parents); it handles children of abusive or neglectful parents. Those children are not technically counted as orphans, but of course they are, in a very real sense, without parents. (For an excellent discussion of why the international orphan crisis is more dire than the US foster crisis, click here).

We can quibble about numbers and statistics all day. But here's the truth: ONE orphan in the world is too many. So whether the number is 13 million, 163 million, or somewhere in between, it is too high.

Apparently, there are 2 billion evangelical Christians in the world today. And each one of us can do something to help the orphan in his distress (James 1:27). Pray. Donate. Advocate. Go on a mission trip. Become a CASA. Babysit. Bring dinner. Adopt. Do something. You'll be glad you did!

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. --Psalm 82:3-4