“Honorable lineage” begins their lives in “garbage”… This is a journey of pain for children of “adultery” in Iraq » Baghdad News Agency today

Baghdad Today – Report: Ikhlas Qahtan

“My family is killing me,” began the 21-year-old MA her conversation When she told us her story, which ended with her throwing her child on the pavement next to a mosque near her area in Baghdad in the first hours after birth.

MA says: “My story began with admiration for a young man through social media who managed to control my thoughts without my knowledge, only to have what happened after a period of no more than 3 months, an illegal relationship, under the pretext that he would to propose to me after a short time.” From my family, but after a short time, I became sure that I had a baby inside me, and when he immediately heard the news, he told me to “get rid of him”. Who then threw him on the street!.

(MA) is not the only one who left her child on the sidewalk, but there are dozens of them that resulted in the birth of a “bastard” child without a mother and father, who can protect him from the words of society.

Where Iraq is a witness, from time to time, a “found” child is found dumped near a waste container, or near a police station or hospital, after which it is transferred to an orphanage or the relevant authorities.

Does he have “foundling” Iraqi identity?

“Cases of abandoned children on the streets and in hospitals are very rare and isolated cases, and these cases are not widespread or widespread in Iraq, in fact, they are very rare and rare,” Hisham al-Dhahabi, head of the Iraqi House of Creativity for the Care of Street Children and Orphans, narrated (Baghdad today).

Al-Dhahabi said: “The care of these children is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour, the Baghdad Governorate and the orphanage, and such cases are dealt with by the relevant government agencies,” noting that “if the child is under one year old, then that child is adopted and that matter is finished.” Through the official submission of some families, and there are families who are waiting for their turn to adopt some children, after which the child is registered in the name of the family. which guides him according to official procedures.

He added: “If the child is old, he is given the identity of ‘honourable’, and this identity is no different from our identities and no one knows it and no one distinguishes it from other identities, except for some officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in charge of this file .”

There are alarming “disturbing” numbers in society

During the first four months of this year, 10 children were found abandoned in the city of Kirkuk, the files of only two of them were registered in the police stations.

While from the beginning of January 2022 to the end of April, 10 children were thrown by families and relatives into deserted streets and spaces, some were returned to their parents or one of them in less than 24 hours.

The spokesman for the Kirkuk Police Command, Lt. Col. Amer Shwani, said in a statement to the media that he followed (Baghdad Today), that “this year we have only two cases related to child dumping.”

He pointed out that “the first case dates back to the end of 2021, but it was included in this year’s statistics and refers to the rejection of two girls by their mother”.

He added: “The two babies have since been cared for at the maternity ward of Azadi Hospital, where their parents have not yet been found.”

He continued: “The second case officially registered by the Kirkuk police happened in March of this year, when a baby was found in an empty cardboard box on the main street of Kirkuk’s Hadideen neighborhood.”

He pointed out that “the child died as soon as he was found”.

Article 383 of the Iraqi Penal Code stipulates imprisonment for anyone who leaves a child in an uninhabited place, exposing it to danger and starvation.

The spokesperson of the police command indicated that “this year there were many cases of dumping of infants, but the police processed them in a short period of time and returned them to their families, so these cases were not officially registered with the police.”

Security sources stated that “at the end of last April, two girl sisters, aged four and five, were found in Al-Askari settlement in Kirkuk, but after monitoring and investigation, their families were found and returned to them.”

She pointed out that “the preliminary investigation confirmed that the motive of most of these cases is the deterioration of the economic situation and social problems in the family, as well as the birth of children out of wedlock.”

On May 25, the body of a newborn baby was found dumped in a sack in a garbage truck in the Dora area, south of the capital Baghdad.

On June 1, a one-month-old baby was found dumped near a hospital in eastern Baghdad.

While the child was found dumped in a garbage dump in the old city of Mosul, at the end of December this year.

When (Baghdad Today) investigated the latest case of a “wanted” child, it was revealed that on January 12, the police found a newborn in the street in the Al-Jihad neighborhood in central Kut.

They are often a real danger to society

For his part, Faleh al-Quraishi, a social and psychological researcher, said (Baghdad Today) that “the phenomenon of throwing children into the streets and hospitals began to spread in Iraqi society as a result of the disintegration of the social fabric and the influence of “teenagers” on social networks with the presence pornographic films and openness to the habits of Western society. Non-adherence to religious, social and clan values.

He added that “throwing children out into the street and into the hospital is often done for children who come illegally, not through marriage,” emphasizing that “for this reason, these children are thrown out into the street and into hospitals, and sometimes these children can be thrown into waste containers, which is one of the most dangerous phenomena that is foreign to Iraq.

Al-Quraishi pointed out that the child “willingly” represents a real threat to Iraqi society, especially since that child will feel a very big disadvantage when he grows up, and in the future he will develop a complex of inferiority, which will prepare and equip him to be a terrorist in the future , thief, criminal or drug dealer. Either a drug addict, or maybe he committed suicide because of society’s view of him.

The social researcher pointed out that “there is a failure of the state to deal with the case of throwing “found” children in the streets and hospitals, and that is why the competent authorities must take care of this problem, because the cases represent a danger to Iraqi society.”