Overcoming Customs And Stigma, Sudan Gives Orphans A Lifeline

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Like so many babies at the Maygoma Orphanage, Nariman Siddiq Ahmed Ali was brought here the day after he was born, sickly and barely alive, weighing less than four pounds.

Rehabilitation. Ghada, about 3 years old, at the Maygoma Orphanage in Khartoum. The conditions of the children and their home have sharply improved. More Photos

Strangers found him in late February after he was dumped on a roadside in a far-flung suburb of this booming capital. Almost certainly he was the product of an illicit union, the writhing, irrefutable evidence of adultery or fornication in a country where that could mean a lifetime of shame or even death — for the mother and the child.

Just a few years ago, chances were Nariman would have perished at Maygoma Orphanage, as 80 percent of the children unlucky enough to end up there did, according to Unicef. Orphans at Maygoma faced a Dickensian existence of want and neglect, many growing up nearly mute and badly stunted, cared for by workers who barely spoke to them and never held them, recoiling from them much like the society that viewed them as irredeemably corrupt by dint of their unfortunate birth.

But in the last few years a radical shift led by an unusual coalition of government officials, Western aid organizations and religious leaders has taken place here. It has rescued many infants of Maygoma from a grim fate by transforming religious and legal attitudes toward children born out of wedlock in this deeply conservative society.

Social customs here have traditionally passed the sins of the parent to the child, making adoption — already a complex issue in Islam, which emphasizes family ties of blood — largely out of the question. But under this new approach, Nariman, who last month lay burbling in a cot he shared with a pink teddy bear, gaining weight and being cooed over by nurses, waited not for death or a life of despair but for placement in a foster home and eventually a family to take him permanently.

“It is really a social revolution,” said Mona Abdullah el-Faki, a government social worker who supervises foster care of children from Maygoma. “It was very difficult to persuade people that adoption is not forbidden in Islam. There are a lot of misconceptions.”

Few religions demand that their adherents contribute to charity as strongly as Islam, and caring for orphans brings special blessings. But Islamic law also forbids adoption in the Western sense, in which a child is absorbed into the adoptive family on equal footing with birth children. The blood relation between birth parent and child and all the rights and responsibilities it confers are sacrosanct and cannot be imitated, according to legal scholars here.

As a result, a child in Sudan raised by a family other than his birth family cannot be given that family’s name, nor can he inherit his father’s property as a birth child would, legal scholars and social workers here say. In addition, an adopted son, once he turned 18, would not be permitted to see his mother or sisters uncovered, because they lack a blood relationship that would bar them from marrying, and an adopted girl would face similar problems of having to cover herself before male family members. Adoption by foreigners is forbidden here.

This thicket of legal issues has led some Muslims to conclude that the whole idea of taking a child permanently into one’s home is haram, or forbidden, under the laws of Islam. This is especially true in countries like Sudan, where Shariah, or Islamic legal code, is the law of the land.

To change those attitudes, the government, helped by Unicef and some local aid organizations, consulted with hundreds of religious and social leaders, met with women’s groups, went to high schools and encouraged the news media to visit Maygoma and see the terrible conditions there.

“It was no place to raise children,” said Osman Abu Fatima, a Unicef program officer. “There were children who could not speak because no one talked to them. Some were malnourished. All were unloved. No one touched or held them. After my first visit I was traumatized by it for a long time.”

All that has changed. Admissions to the orphanage have held steady between roughly 500 and 700 a year, according to Unicef statistics, but the orphanage has been renovated, and its nurseries are decked out with Snoopy clocks and Care Bears posters on walls painted bright yellow, pink and blue. Nurses are trained to hold and play with the children as they feed and care for them. Medical care has vastly improved. In 2001, 479 children died. In 2006, 186 did, according to Unicef.

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