Chapter 2 describes the enabling environment in which orphanage trafficking occurs. It examines how the utility of the orphan child for aid and development is manipulated for the purpose of the orphanage-trafficking business model in order to profit from donor funding and orphanage tourism. It demonstrates how governments and non-governmental organisations utilise the orphan child as a focal point to increase aid and tourism, leading to a financial dependence on the orphan child. This utility is manipulated and exploited by both governments and non-government organisations to encourage what has been termed an ‘orphan addiction’. This chapter describes the political and social imperatives behind the creation, encouragement and maintenance of the orphan addiction, which in turn drives orphanage tourism and the production of paper orphans. The increasing demand for orphanage tourism creates a demand for the maintenance of an orphan population to visit and volunteer with, which is achieved through orphanage trafficking. Finally, this chapter explains the financial incentives of orphanage trafficking for developing nation governments.

Chapter 1 articulates the process of orphanage trafficking in developing states. It explains how the recruitment of a child into an orphanage occurs and describes how the process of orphanage trafficking manipulates the procedural aspects of gatekeeping into alternative care by claiming children are abandoned or orphaned rather than relinquished. This manipulation is critical in the orphanage-trafficking process as it indicates an intent by the involved orphanage operators to utilise the alternative care framework to justify the admission of children into care. The final part of the orphanage-trafficking process is the maintenance of the child in institutionalisation for the purpose of exploitation and profit through donor funding and orphanage tourism. The chapter then turns to establishing the prevalence of orphanage trafficking in developing states across the world. To do this, it focuses on four regions where there is evidence that the rising number of children in institutional care is in part due to the presence of donor funding and orphanage tourism: Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.