Conflict doesn’t just destroy buildings and infrastructure—it tears apart families, displaces communities, and leaves children frighteningly vulnerable to exploitation. In places like Haiti, Palestine, and Ukraine, where political instability and war have upended daily life, a devastating pattern is emerging: children separated from their families at alarming rates, and traffickers are just waiting take advantage.

This is the hidden crisis beneath the headlines—and it’s one we can’t afford to ignore.

Whenever conflict strikes, families are the first casualties, and children are at the center of the suffering. Children can become separated from their families in the chaos of war.  Children in orphanages, already without the protection of family, can become further separated as they are removed to other locations, paperwork and any other trace that might lead them back to family lost.   Aid organizations often sweep in, seeing children alone, and pull children into orphanages in an effort to provide care without knowing the harm of institutionalizing children.

Once separated, children become incredibly vulnerable to all forms of exploitation: trafficking, forced labor, early marriage, and illegal adoption. Some end up in orphanages that are not only poorly regulated, but in many cases, profit-driven—part of a growing crisis known as orphanage trafficking.

These children are not orphans, and even those who may be probably still have family who could care for them.  All children need the love, protection and care of family. These children are victims of conflict and systems that fail to protect families.

What’s Happening in Haiti, Palestine, and Ukraine

• Haiti is in a humanitarian freefall. Armed gangs now control large swaths of the country, driving thousands from their homes. Families are fragmented by violence and desperation, and children are increasingly recruited by gangs or placed in orphanages—many of which are unlicensed and exploitative. In fact, 80% of children in Haitian orphanages have living parents, but poverty and instability push families toward separation.
• Palestine, particularly in Gaza, has seen generations of children displaced and orphaned by war. The current escalation has left thousands of children separated from caregivers or living in overcrowded shelters with no safe supervision. Trafficking risks spike when formal child protection systems collapse under the weight of bombardment and humanitarian blockades.
• Ukraine, more than two years into a brutal war, has seen over 16,000 children forcibly deported or separated, according to international observers. There are unofficial reports that this number could be as high as 200,000, and to date, only 1,300 Ukrainian children have been returned to Ukraine.  Thousands more live in displacement camps or institutions. As the war drags on, these children are at risk of being trafficked across borders, especially as systems struggle to track their movement and reunite families.  There are reports that many of these children already have been 'reprogrammed' and adopted into Russian families.  They may never be reunited with their biological families.  They have lost their families, their culture, and their country - all rights enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

What Can We Do?

1. Prioritize Family-Based Care: Orphanages should be a last resort. Organizations and governments must invest in keeping children with safe family members or placing them in family-style foster care. The data is clear—children thrive in families, not institutions.
2. Support Reunification Efforts: International aid must include robust systems to identify, trace, and reunite children with their families after separation. It’s not enough to provide food and shelter—children need connection and care.
3. Fund Local Child Protection: Grassroots organizations and local social workers are often the first to respond and the most trusted by communities. Supporting them is one of the fastest ways to protect children from traffickers.
4. Advocate for Policy Reform: We must pressure governments and international agencies to uphold protections against child trafficking and end the pipeline of funding that enables orphanage tourism and exploitative child migration practices.  We know that conflict leads to the separation of children from families - we must be prepared to respond swiftly to reunite children and families as soon as safely possible, without resorting to institutionalization.
5. Stay Informed and Speak Out: Silence sustains the status quo. Share stories, support ethical aid organizations, and refuse to look away.

Conflict may seem inevitable, but the separation and exploitation of children is not. It is a choice we make—by what we fund, what we ignore, and how we respond.

At Helping Children Worldwide and through partnerships across the globe, we are working to strengthen families, protect children, and support the local systems that make reunification and healing possible. But we can’t do it alone.  Together, we can make sure that even in the chaos of war, children are not forgotten—and families are not broken beyond repair.

At Helping Children Worldwide (HCW), we believe that data is more than just numbers—it’s a powerful tool for learning, improving, and making a greater impact. Together with our allies, we are increasingly focusing on evaluating our work’s effectiveness and sharing our findings with the broader child welfare community.

In September 2024, CRC Case Management Supervisor George Kulanda, Dr. Laura Horvath, and Dr. Sarah Neville Jimenez presented the results of a small but insightful research project at the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) Summit in Nashville, where over 1,000 attendees participated both virtually and in person (Yasmine Vaughan presented this same research at the ICAR8 conference). This research, led by Dr. Neville Jimenez, examined the impact of the CRC’s Firmly Rooted Family Strengthening Workshop on caregivers and their relationships with their children. Building on this momentum, Dr. Neville Jimenez recently presented a poster on the research at Brown University’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Development. 

The study used a pre-and-post survey methodology to compare caregivers who attended the workshop with those who did not. The workshop’s interactive, play-based curriculum focused on basic household economic literacy and attachment-building techniques. Results showed that after the workshop, caregivers reported more instances of comforting their children and increased occurrences of parents and children apologizing to each other. However, no statistically significant changes were detected in financial habits or other attachment markers—likely because such behaviors take time to develop and may require longer-term measurement. The study also suggested that separating financial literacy and attachment-building into distinct workshops would allow participants to absorb and apply each concept more effectively.

At HCW, we embrace the philosophy that "data is just data"—neither good nor bad, but a tool that helps us refine our work. Through ongoing data collection and analysis, we gain deeper insight into how our programs truly affect the people we serve. This research has already led HCW and CRC to revise the curriculum to enhance its effectiveness for CRC clients.
Sharing our findings is just as important as conducting research. Opportunities like the CAFO Summit, ICAR8 and the Brown University presentation allow us to contribute to the global child welfare knowledge base.

By openly sharing what we learn, we help drive positive change, ensuring that vulnerable children and families receive the best possible support.
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As we move forward, we remain committed to research-driven solutions that make a tangible difference. Thank you for being part of this journey with us.

I've been with Helping Children Worldwide for a while now, but in my former life, I was a high school English teacher and a professor of English Education. My plan after college was always to become an English professor, focusing on Shakespeare and writing. Words have always been my first love.  God had another plan for my life.  I still deeply believe in the power of words. As a certain wise wizard once said, "Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic." So, what does that have to do with HCW's Q2 focus on child welfare, child protection, and family strengthening? Everything. Words shape our understanding, but their meanings can shift across borders and over time.

Take, for example, the word "orphan." About 50 years ago, UNICEF redefined it to include any child who had lost one or both parents. While this may have been intended to bring attention and resources to more vulnerable children, it also created confusion. If you asked the average person today what an orphan is, they’d likely say a child with no parents, or anyone who could care for them, but that's not the actual working definition used by those engaged in global child welfare.  And even if a child has lost both parents, that doesn't automatically mean that they have no one to care for them, as many children are cared for by grandparents, extended family, foster care and adoptive families.  The word "orphan" as defined in this way doesn't illuminate or clarify - it obfuscates.

I experienced this firsthand when I explained UNICEF’s definition to my husband, who lost his father at 15. He looked at me like I was crazy. "I'm an orphan?" he exclaimed. His mother, very much alive and well, raised him and his siblings on her own after her husband passed. He had never considered himself an orphan, and neither did his family.  This revelation frankly made him angry.  It felt to him a little like a cheat designed to raise more money by blurring the definition.  Kind of the opposite of the idea of words as a means to illuminate.

For years, I’ve wrestled with the implications of the word "orphan" and the terms that accompany it. I was especially struck by phrases like "orphan epidemic" and later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, "orphan pandemic." While these terms may help illustrate the scale of suffering, they don’t truly define the issue at hand - they don't point us to the problem (family separation) or the solution (reintegration and family strengthening). The vast majority of children who have lost one or both parents are actually cared for by extended family. Of the approximately 150 million children classified as "orphaned" globally, only about 8 million live in institutional settings—separated from family and parental care.  And yes, this is a cause for concern, and the worthy focus of a lot of our work - but it doesn't point us clearly to the solution.

So, where should our focus be? As my friend and colleague Elli Oswald wisely says, "The solution to orphanhood is not an orphanage." Those words may sound like they belong together, but they don’t. If we accept the premise that "orphanhood" is a problem we must solve, we must recognize that the issue we're really trying to address is one of family separation - and the solution isn't a building—it’s a FAMILY.  Sometimes it seems to me that by placing a child into an orphanage we create "an orphan" (after all, who lives in an orphanage but an orphan?).  But a child reintegrated into a family - their own or an adopted one - is no longer an "orphan."  They're a son or daughter.

If we are facing a crisis, it’s not an orphan crisis—it’s a family separation crisis.  Let's call it what it is, and then set about solving it by reuniting children with families, and by strengthening those families to prevent separation from happening in the first place.
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I don’t want to remove the word "orphan" from our discussions entirely. After all, James 1:27 describes caring for widows and orphans as the purest expression of our faith. But I believe we need to shift our language to reflect the real problem and the real solution. Instead of focusing on "orphanhood," we should be addressing family separation. By strengthening families and preventing separation in the first place, we can move beyond labels and work toward real, lasting change.