An impoverished mother, who allowed a non-profit to send her four children to Italy because she couldn’t afford to take care of them, is now pleading with authorities to intervene after losing contact with the kids.

Nine years ago, Kampong Cham resident Uon Nhor, 40, said she and her husband, Met Mao, 48, left their children with the Phnom Penh-based Children and Poor Community Development Organization because their standard of living was so low. Nhor said her salary from working on a rubber plantation wasn’t high enough to provide her kids with an education.

For a year, she visited them in the orphanage and occasionally brought food, she says. But in 2009, the same year Cambodia would put a freeze on international adoptions, the children were sent to Italy for adoption.

According to Nhor, the organisation’s director promised that her children would visit her once a year, and would return home permanently at the age of 18.

Mum of children adopted abroad in touch with org
Thu, 16 March 2017

An impoverished mother who allowed a non-profit to send her children abroad for adoption and a hoped-for better life was reunited on Tuesday with the organisation responsible for her offspring’s departure. ..
[The director] gave me a document explaining where the children are. Three went to Italy and one went to England,” Nhor said. “I have been away from my children for nine years already . . . I want to hear from them and have a conversation with them once a month on the phone”.

Yuth, the former director of the organisation, said the adoption agreement signed by the Ministry of Social Affairs stipulates that the adoptive parents must provide information about the children to the ministry every six months.