Countries of Origin – Lithuania

On the basis of the information, provided by the Department of Statistics, 21.790 people emigrated abroad in 2009. In comparison, 17 015 people emigrated in 2008 and 13 853 people − in 2007.

Having the aim to disclose problems that children face because of their parent’s emigration abroad, Children’s Rights Ombudsman Institution of the Republic of Lithuania in cooperation with the Ministry of Science and Education made a research in 2007. The collected data from 651 educational institutions (schools, kindergarten-schools, nursery-kindergarten) revealed that 4.039 children were left without parental care (i.e. grandparents, relatives, older brothers and sisters, friends, acquaintances and other persons de facto take care of these children, meanwhile some of them were left to live alone). This caused children being sad, worried, absent-minded, bad-tempered and had a negative influence to their psychosocial development, relationship with parents and peers, various problems at school. Furthermore, limitation of institutional cooperation while informing municipal Children‘s rights security agencies about children whose parents emigrated abroad also occurred to be a problem.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor of the Republic of Lithuania presented a study “Children’s, whose parents left Lithuania, psychological and social well-being factors” in 2008 where the affection of parents’ temporary emigration from Lithuania to child’s physical, social and other needs was analyzed as well as key measures, which could reduce the impact of emigration and the effects to the child were identified.