The numbers are truly horrifying. In 2017 alone:
• 181 children were taken in by the Children Welfare Organization in Alborz Province, northern Iran
• More than 580 babies were admitted to the Welfare Organization of Khorasan Razavi Province of northeast Iran
• The same organisation said that one child was abandoned each day in city streets or even the local holy shrine, with Mashhad being the top location for abandoned children
• Five babies were admitted to the special babies centres every day in Tehran Province
• 16 babies were abandoned in the city of Isfahan each month
According to the former director of welfare issues in Iran’s Ministry of Interior, around 1,000 children under three are abandoned each year in Iran, which seems low considering the reports from the areas above.
Iranian Resistance movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran wrote: “The dark reality is that these babies’ parents, living in poverty, are so desperate that they are left with no option other than abandoning their newborns, hoping a children welfare society takes them in or they are adopted by families able to provide care for them.”
These children become the responsibility of Iran’s Welfare Organization, which often does not have enough money to adequately protect the children due to governmental corruption and mismanagement.
Of course, these statistics are unlikely to reflect the true numbers of abandoned children in Iran, not least because the Regime often underplays problems in the country to make themselves look more secure.
Many babies and children are actually being sold by desperate parents, who might even be tricked into believing that their children are being adopted, and fall victim to a criminal underbelly. These kids will likely wind up the victims of sex traffickers, drug kingpins, or even organ harvesters.
The root cause for this crisis is poverty, as cited by the Head of Iran’s Social Trauma Society. These parents are seeing rising costs, stagnant or dropping wages, and a severe lack of government assistance. Even government-run hospitals are refusing to treat people, including children, whose families are too poor to pay for treatment.
Furthermore, it is almost impossible for the family to stop the growth of their family, due to the mullah’s Sharia law and the cost of obtaining an illegal abortion, which may also be unsafe.
