The case of Dr. Rania al-Abbasi and her children was the catalyst that first brought attention to the local and international welfare institutions and orphanages. Press reports and field investigations suggest that these institutions played a direct role in the disappearance of children and the falsification of their identity documents.
Dr. Rania al-Abbasi and her six children were arrested by Syrian regime forces in Damascus in 2013. Despite her family’s attempts to reach any indication of their fate, no one has been able to confirm any information. The doctor’s brother, Hassan al-Abbasi, posted a video in which he talks about his contacts with SOS Children’s Villages in Damascus after receiving information that his sister’s children were there under pseudonyms.
In a statement, the international organization SOS Children’s Villages acknowledged that it had indeed received the children of detainees until 2019, at the request of the Syrian regime at the time, and that it had asked the regime to stop transferring these children to the organization. This statement was an official acknowledgment that the villages received children until 2019, and that other organizations played this role either concurrently with the work of the children’s villages or even after they had stopped receiving children.
This raises the question of the role of welfare institutions and the functions they perform apart from, or perhaps at the center of, the overall authoritarian reality.
In fact, orphanages have played a political role throughout history: they have not always been in the service of children, or the bright face of charity, but rather have often been a tool used by authorities in the process of erasing Indigenous identity, assimilating children, and preparing them to submit to the dominant authority, its culture, and its agendas.
In Canada, for example, the forced separation of children and their placement in institutional care began in 1831 with the establishment of 139 institutions targeting more than 150,000 Indigenous children. In 1920, the Indian Affairs Officer declared that the primary purpose of orphanages was to eliminate the Indigenous peoples as an impediment to colonial expansion and the exploitation of natural resources.
Thus, care institutions, or what were then known as residential schools, were established to separate children from their parents, language, and Indigenous culture through the forced missionary work carried out by the Catholic Church at the time.
The results were disastrous, with 40 percent of the children in these institutions dying. The institutionalized system failed to guarantee education, with only 3 percent reaching the first intermediate grade. It also destroyed family and cultural ties, resulting in generations with deep psychological and social scars.
Studies confirm that individuals who lived in these institutions lacked social skills and the ability to form family relationships, which was reflected in high rates of addiction and crime among them, especially since a large number of them were sexually abused in these institutions under the authority of the Catholic Church.
Studies also indicate that the heavy legacy of this institutionalized system requires redoubled efforts for reform, as successive generations continue to suffer from the consequences of this forced separation from the family.
In recent years, hundreds of unmarked graves have been uncovered on the sites of former residential schools in Canada, shocking the world and bringing the tragic effects of these institutions back into the spotlight.
Searches using radar techniques have revealed the remains of children who were never officially registered, indicating the grave abuses suffered by Indigenous peoples and their children under the colonial system. These discoveries reinforced calls for justice and accountability and emphasized the need to listen to the voices of survivors and their families, who still carry deep wounds from these brutal practices. They have also called for expanded investigations and reparations for this tragic legacy of one of the most profound oppressions in Canadian history.
However, the colonial legacy of the care institution model spread to all Arab countries that were colonized, and our region, particularly Lebanon and Syria, saw this approach flourish despite its dire consequences for children.
In Lebanon, for example, welfare work was privatized and each sect had its orphanage under the guise of charity work. Nevertheless, these institutions aimed to erase the individual identity of children and make them indebted to the welfare system and the sect, leader, or politician behind it.
The global SOS Children’s Villages model did not stray far from this practice, as these villages spread all over the world, confirming the colonial spirit of states and their subordination to local authority.
We must also acknowledge that many international organizations are subject to repressive regimes in the countries in which they are located, and this raises serious ethical concerns.
The involvement of SOS Children’s Villages in Syria in the disappearance of children at the request of local authorities mirrors what took place during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Ukraine, Russia systematically separated children from their parents and transported them to Russia for adoption, a tactic used to strip them of their Ukrainian identity. Many of these children were also placed in SOS Children’s Villages, where they were subjected to forced assimilation into the Russian system, further erasing their cultural and national ties.
At the time, the organization faced a lot of criticism about its role in implementing the regime’s policy, while the international organization justified what happened in the villages in Russia as an individual act by local employees of the ruling regime.
In response to European pressure, on May 18, 2023, the organization decided to separate the children’s villages in Russia from the international organization.
This is not the first time that SOS Children’s Villages as an international organization and local associations have been involved in the disappearance of children, and arguments such as the obligation to submit to local pressures do not justify the involvement of the organization and its form of sponsorship in what is a blatant violation against children.
This international organization must take responsibility for providing information on the fate of these children and conducting a comprehensive review of the institutionalized care system. The past atrocities in Canada—where forced separations were followed by the discovery of mass graves beneath care institutions—along with similar practices uncovered in Syria and earlier in Ukraine, compel us to reconsider the colonial-era child welfare system, which has repeatedly proven to be a catastrophic failure.
