Chechnya: in 2010, law enforcement bodies revealed 600 homeless children

As stated by the above bodies, most of them were children of migrants from Central Asian countries.

"In total, during 12 months of last year 600 homeless children were identified in our republic. The vast majority of them are migrants' kids. Also last year our inspectors registered 219 children and adolescents from among local residents at the juvenile inspections. Mainly they were detained for vagrancy, petty thefts and systematic skipping their lessons. It should be noted that last year there were no homeless kids in Chechen families," the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed by a source from law enforcement bodies.

"Some seven or eight years ago we had a fairly widespread phenomenon of homeless children. Naturally, it was directly related to consequences of warfare. But now, this problem can be regarded as closed. The children who occurred without parental care as a result of death of parents or due to other circumstances now live either with their relatives or in specialized boarding schools," he said.

There was no tradition in Chechnya to send children or elderly family members to boarding institutions, because it was regarded a great shame. Before the two Chechen war campaigns, there was no such notion as a "homeless child", the head of a local NGO has noted.