Moldova’s left-behind children

It has been 12 long years since Cristian Codreanu last celebrated a birthday with his mother. Since she left her three-year-old son for a job in Italy, there have been no Christmases together, either. No Easters as a family. Shy and diffident, with small dark eyes that dart around his living room, Cristian speaks softly and slowly, his shoulders hunched.

“I do not think that my mother will come back here,” he says, looking down at his hands. “I talk to her on Skype,” he continues. “When she can.”

Cristian lives in Ruseştii Noi, a small, dusty village in rural Moldova, the poorest country in Europe. He is one of 40,000 Moldovan children who have been abandoned by parents leaving the country in search of jobs. According to a recent study by Unicef, the UN’s child rights organisation, 21 per cent of Moldovan children are missing at least one parent due to labour migration. Across the country, but predominantly in rural areas, families have been ripped apart by the lure of job prospects in Russia or Europe, leaving their offspring to grow up alone.

The lucky ones are left with a solitary parent or grandparent. “I prepared breakfast for him one morning, and she was gone,” says Valentina Codreanu, Cristian’s 70-year-old grandmother, who has taken care of him since. The less fortunate are watched over by family friends or entrusted to older siblings. And the worst-off are left in the care of the state, sent to government-run boarding houses that western charities describe as akin to Victorian-era orphanages.

“We have a generation that was raised without their parents,” says Viorica Dumbrăveanu, head of family and child protection at the country’s ministry of labour and social protection. “This is a trauma for our nation.”

Cristian’s mother used to work in a shop in Ruseştii Noi, 30 minutes’ drive from Chişinău, the country’s capital city, where many pavements have potholes so big they look like bomb craters and the concrete skeletons of abandoned buildings dot the skyline.

Today she looks after an elderly couple in Grosseto, a small city close to the Tuscan coastline. After migrating, Elena did not return to Moldova for three-and-a-half years. Recently, she has managed to visit for some weeks each August. For the rest of the time she is a photograph in Cristian’s wallet. “Any time that we get to spend together is very precious,” he says. “I jump for joy when I know that she is coming.”

He is now 15, and a keen footballer. He used to support a local team but these days he supports Italy’s Juventus too. He is also top of his maths class, and works very hard at school, he says, to make his mother proud. “Of course she would like to be here, to be closer to us,” says his grandmother. Five of her six children have left the country for work. “What kind of happiness can she have?” she says, pleadingly. “She works so many hours, she earns so little. Sometimes just €50 comes back here each month for the boy.”

Migrant workers like Elena are an integral part of the Moldovan economy. The country’s overseas citizens sent back $2bn in 2013, according to the latest available World Bank data. This is the equivalent of 25 per cent of the country’s GDP, or 80 per cent of its annual national budget expenditure. And in a country where the average monthly salary is about 4,200 Moldovan lei ($220), and one in eight people live below the poverty line, many say they have no choice but to go overseas to earn a living.

According to the preliminary results of a census taken last year, 330,000 of Moldova’s 2.9m population live outside its borders. Estimates by international agencies say the number could be double that. Roughly half of these expatriates work in Russia. Another quarter are in Italy, says the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). About 50 per cent work in the construction industry, almost always unofficially, from project to project. Roughly a third are in domestic services or personal care.

While the phenomenon of workers leaving their children at home has existed for decades, officials say that it is getting worse. “In 2014 we faced the biggest number of abandoned children as a result of migration,” says Elena Russo, child protection officer for the social assistance department of Moldova’s northern Bălți district. Last year, in her district alone, at least 427 children were left without any parents and another 659 lost one.

“If a parent does not have bread, nothing can stop them,” says Lidia Gorceag, resident psychologist at the IOM’s Moldova mission. “They will break the law, they will leave their children. They have no other option.”

 . . . 

Fifteen minutes’ drive from Ruseştii Noi, past a bright blue lake where a group of goats graze on the shore, is the village of Costeşti. Here, along a deeply rutted mud track, workmen are building an extension to the Plugaru family home, replacing external wooden walls with solid bricks and refitting a leaking roof.

“We had such low financial income, the house was in a very bad condition, the children were small. It was basically impossible for us to survive,” recalls Eudochia Plugaru. A pile of vegetables sits in one of the unfinished concrete rooms on the side of the house, as a stray dog wanders past.

“In order to build the house and ensure the children some future . . . letting my husband leave was basically the only option that we had,” Eudochia says, perched on the edge of her bed where Georgi, her husband, has not slept for years. He left for Israel in 2010, where he works as a carer for an elderly man in Haifa. Georgi sends home as much as €1,000 a month, a substantial sum in Moldova. The bathroom has a fitted toilet and shower, and imported Israeli toiletries fill the shelves. But he has only returned to Moldova once.

Their daughter, 13-year-old Michaela, misses reading fairy tales with her father. “I remember watching TV together, spending time together,” she says. “Now I talk to him [over Skype] about my school work, how I am feeling . . . My brother takes care of me. He looks after me like my father would.”

If a parent does not have bread, nothing can stop them. They will break the law, they will leave their children

An intelligent girl who enjoys reading, Michaela will probably only be able to attend the design college she has chosen if her father remains abroad, earning foreign currency. “I want to be an interior designer but I keep this a secret from my father. I want him to be surprised when he finds out,” she says.

“The distance . . . you can feel the distance. That has a big impact on the attitude of the family,” says her mother, a black-and-white photo of her husband on the dressing table next to her. “He will not be back here for sure in the next 10 years.”

For Cristian, Michaela’s brother, the separation has been hard. “It is very difficult for my son. He is 17, he would like to ask important questions, to have a man-to-man talk. To ask his advice. I am only a mother,” says Eudochia. “As a man, to help shape his personality, he really needs his father.”

 . . . 

The financial benefits of parental migration have muddied the debate in Moldova, with many charities and international observers believing they provide a smokescreen for the government to drag its feet on tackling the issue. The money sent back by parents often means that the children left behind rank higher in education, healthcare and development metrics. The emotional impact is harder to measure. As one government official explains: “We have always cared about the money but not about the kids.”

Unlike many of his friends and the boys he plays football with, Cristian Codreanu wears imported Converse branded trainers and goes on holiday abroad. His grandmother’s kitchen has a Samsung washing machine and an LG television. A modern computer sits on the desk in the sitting room.

The older he gets, he says, the more his mother’s absence makes sense. “I was never angry. Since I know that she went there for me,” he says. In a strange way, he says with a smile, he feels lucky.

Homes owned by families with members abroad are easily spotted on the grassy slopes of Ruseştii Noi. PVC windows, tiled roofs and freshly painted brickwork are the calling cards for families with members working overseas, in stark contrast to the traditional wooden homes that dominate the village. Modern cars with Italian number plates sit behind metal gates.

Such are the economic benefits, that leaving children behind in order to get a job abroad has become “a social norm” in Moldova, according to Nuné Mangasaryan, country head of Unicef. According to the organisation’s recent study, Moldovan children left behind by parents working abroad are half as likely to live in poverty as those with both parents inside the country.

I did not go to Russia because I like it. I did not have the means to support my children. I did not even have wood for the fire

But there are other costs. “Even though there might be some financial flows coming to them . . . there is a bonding with the child that is missing,” says Mangasaryan. “It is part of a child’s human rights to grow up in a supportive family environment. Nothing can really replace it. No amount of money . . . If a child is without one or both parents, of course they suffer. On the emotional side there are huge consequences.”

According to the IOM’s Gorceag, the prevalence of alcohol or drug abuse, crime and sexual violence is markedly higher among Moldovan children who were without parents during their development. “There is no research into how a child who has been deprived of his mother since he was one year old would be able to create his own family, what emotional reactions he would have, and how that would impact on his children,” she says. “Who can measure this? It is impossible . . . But it is undeniable that there are people that will be marked by this the whole of their life.”

The psychologist recounts examples of teenagers attempting suicide after their parents leave, or being sold into sex work by human traffickers. Two brothers, aged just 14 and 15, watched their grandmother die of cancer in their living room. “Their mother left them with her years ago, nobody knows where she is,” she says. “What do we do with these boys?”

The road north out of Chişinău, towards Bălţi, Moldova’s second city, meanders through rolling farmland. Horse-drawn carts laden with goods trundle along the dual carriageway as labourers shuffle along rows of grape vines.

Carved out of a collapsing Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Moldova today finds itself caught on the very edge of Europe. Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, and outside the European Union, it has no access to the sea and no significant natural resources or domestic energy supplies.

Its industrial economy was savaged after the communist regime withered, leaving hundreds of thousands scrabbling for a living in an inefficient agriculture sector. A 2012 drought saw grain production halve and agricultural output fall nearly 25 per cent, plunging Moldova into recession. A year later, in retaliation for Moldova’s EU integration attempts, Russia banned imports of Moldovan wine, one of the country’s most valuable trading products.

Such economic jolts can have huge impacts on job prospects and incomes in Moldova, where nominal GDP per capita is $2,240, compared with an EU average of around $35,420. That economic desperation has fuelled the exodus of Moldova’s working-age population.

In response to the rising numbers and pressure from international observers and civil-society organisations, Moldova’s government has finally started to take action against those leaving their children behind. A law passed in 2014 made the registration of guardians mandatory, and gives local mayors the responsibility for ensuring the children have responsible new carers.

Nicolae Rotaras is mayor of Nicoreni, a tiny village located four hours’ drive north of Chişinău on a hill dotted with concrete houses and rough patches of grass where ducks and geese graze. A decade ago, he says, the number of parents emigrating without their children had begun to stabilise. But since 2008 the abandonment problem has become worse. “The financial crisis was to blame,” he says.

Twenty years ago, 4,800 people lived in Nicoreni. Today just 3,400 people live there, and 1,400 of them are children or pensioners. Last year, 900 villagers left the country for work. “The ones with stronger nerves and guts can resist . . . But unfortunately people do not have the determination,” he says.

My parents would visit seldom . . . sometimes they would come just once a year. I missed them a huge amount

Valentina Crismari, a single mother of twin boys, left Nicoreni four years ago for a construction job in Moscow after failing to find work locally. “I do not go to Russia because I like it,” she says. “Life’s difficult situations force you to leave your children . . . I did not have the means to support them. I did not even have wood for the fire.” She left behind her two five-year-olds, enrolling them in one of the state-run boarding homes, or “internats” as they are known locally.

Last year, Valentina returned to the small, cold house she rents from her sister in order to reunite with her sons. A portable grill is the only electrical appliance in the main room and yellow advertising posters for a brand of biscuits stuck on the bare concrete walls are the sole splashes of colour. Clothes washed by hand in cold water hang on a line that runs from the building to a nearby tree.

“I did not like the way that the institution took care of my children . . . I made a mistake. I regret it very much,” Valentina says, wearing two jumpers and clasping her hands together as the wind whistles through gaps in the window pane. “There is no place better than home with the mother.”

“We like it here. It is much better here,” agrees her son Ruslan, whose eyes light up as he nods vigorously. “It was hard to be so far away from home. I missed not seeing my mummy and my grandma.”

Ruslan and his brother Sergiu were sent to an internat four hours away from Nicoreni. They had their clothes stolen by older children and developed skin diseases. “It felt so great to know we could come home,” Ruslan explains, smiling to expose a row of missing milk teeth, as his mother begins to cry. Today, the keen runner can get to the local school in a breathless two-minute sprint.

The internats, Soviet hangovers that were common across eastern Europe, are seen as a central problem in the battle against child abandonment in Moldova. Before 2008, parents could enrol their children in one of the institutions with just a letter of application.

According to Lumos, the British charity set up by J K Rowling that has worked with the Moldovan government to close the institutions, 96 per cent of the children housed in internats today have living relatives. A majority have no disabilities. “Part of it is to do with the old communist mindset. The system was, before the revolution, if there was any trouble in the family, the child was removed and placed in an institution,” says Georgette Mulheir, Lumos chief executive. “That made giving your child up acceptable and normal. It became a habitual, easy response to any difficulty.”

The FT was not able to visit any of the homes, which are slowly being closed down. Government officials say that it is almost impossible for new children to be admitted into them, except in extreme cases of children incapable of finding foster parents. “We are five years away from no children in institutions,” says Mulheir. “When I think back to how horrific the conditions were . . . that is really something amazing.”

But while shutting down the institutions goes some way to fixing one of the side effects of migration, it does not tackle the underlying issues. Some worry that parents will still go, regardless of a lack of state support for those they leave behind.

“The institutions are a very important safety net,” says Sergiu Lisnic, a migrant labourer. “Shutting down the schools is a big problem because there will be nobody to be responsible for the children who do not have relatives.” Six years ago, when Sergiu and his wife both left for jobs in Moscow, their son Daniel was sent to an internat 50km away. There the children were taught only a primary-school syllabus, regardless of age.

“[My parents] would visit seldom, and we would just spend more time at school,” says 16-year-old Daniel, sitting on a low bed in the darkened living room. “Sometimes they would come once every three months. But sometimes just once a year . . . I missed them a huge amount. In the beginning it was very difficult, but then it got easier.”

The internat was home to about 100 boys, aged from five to 20. “Those that did not have a place to stay [after turning 18] would just stick around,” says Daniel. “We did not have the option to stay here. We had to go,” says Sergiu, as his son looks at the floor. “It was not easy, but it was a must.”

The house is sparsely furnished, with no electronics in the living room. An old horse is tied up next to the wooden outdoor toilet, grazing in the small garden. Sergiu, a burly man with rough, chapped hands scarred by Moscow’s building sites, stands with his arms crossed as he talks. Next to him, at his feet, is the family’s youngest son, Simion.

The 11-year-old giggles and nods when asked if Daniel had been a good big brother when the two of them were in the internat. He will need him for support again in the future; the family’s reunion is not permanent. While his wife says she will stay in Moldova for the time being, Sergiu will head back to Moscow as soon as he is offered a job.

Daniel will probably follow him shortly, despite getting offers for trials for some local football teams in Chişinău. “If I manage to get a job I would like to stay here. But Moscow is interesting. And it is beautiful,” he says, looking across at his father.

 . . . 

In Chişinău, it is easy to lose sight of the issue of child abandonment given Moldova’s seemingly endless list of problems. A shaky government coalition is struggling to assert its authority, the justice system is riddled with corruption, and war in neighbouring Ukraine is raising fears over the fate of Transnistria, a breakaway region on its eastern border that is essentially a satellite Russian military state.

But in her office in the country’s ministry of labour and social protection, Viorica Dumbrăveanu is optimistic about the progress made. “Things have changed a lot and there is a positive dynamic ongoing,” she says, her desk piled with reports, data tables and letters. “For the first time in Moldova we can speak about a national programme of developing parental skills. Finally we have realised that we need the programmes for parents.”

A law graduate who worked her way up the ministry, Dumbrăveanu recently set up a telephone helpline for abandoned children. “There is a changing situation for Moldova,” she says, “and I hope to see you in 10 years to talk about the impact.”

But in Nicoreni, on a dusty football field where young boys are playing, the village mayor wrings his hands over the lack of progress in tackling the issue during his 12 years in office. “It is very worrying because in 20 years, these children will have to take care of us,” says Nicolae Rotaras, who knows many of the abandoned children by name. “But now, if they will have some emotional and psychological negative effects from the migration, that will have a bad impact on their development as humans and impact their behaviour even now.

“When a child is an infant, the parents still think about leaving. It is like a disease,” he adds, shaking his head. “This is a tragedy.”

Henry Foy is the FT’s central Europe correspondent

Photographs: Ramin Mazur