This article dwells on five dramatic cases of child abandonment, in which mothers killed their child, in most cases shortly after birth, differing from the other common and ‘normal’ abandonment cases.
Since child abandonment is a sensitive topic, and is commonly confined to the family circle or the knowledge of the abandoner, there is a dearth of written materials on the subject, both at national and international levels. In Ethiopia, no studies have been undertaken to assess the nature and magnitude of the abandoning of children. Ex- cept for a short, forty-page paper written in 1982 (1974 Ethiopian Calendar or E. C.) in Amharic (Anonymous 1982). I did not find any other scientific works on the problem. Even the 1982 paper was not written on the basis of solid research, but in fact was sim- ply an outcome of repeated meetings and discussions among government officials from different ministries and organisations. Moreover, the limited literature which is avail- able focuses on street children in general, with little or no distinction made between street children and those who have been abandoned. Hardly anything is known about why people abandon their children, who are the perpetrators of the act and the like.
The police, the court, hospitals and governmental and non-governmental child wel- fare organisations were extremely reluctant to co-operate with the researcher. Refusal by the police and the courts and even government hospitals was not surprising due to the ‘bureaucratic’ nature of such organisations. What was shocking to me was the unwill- ingness of the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that pretend to be entrusted to the well-being of children. It is reasonable to assume that institutions involved in assist- ing abandoned children should extend maximum co-operation to studies of this kind. However, to my surprise, some of these non-governmental organisations bluntly re- fused to co-operate with my endeavours perhaps due to the fear of exposure of some of their activities. Despite all these problems, attempts have been made to collect scanty institutional records and registers to make the information more or less complete.