You don't have permissions to access this page, 147.45.197.102. President Maia Sandu visited the city of Telenesti, where the festival “Hora Sânzienelor” is taking place.   “I met local craftsmen, artist groups, and many people who value and promote our culture and traditions. We need to preserve peace and freedom so that we can continue to enjoy the best of our nation. We must keep our country safe to become part of the great European family”, said the head of state. The OSCE Mission to Moldova supported three concerts and one workshop within the 14th Ethno Jazz Festival, one of the largest cultural events in Moldova, which took place in Chisinau, Teleneşti and Tiraspol between 23 and 27 September 2015. The Mission’s involvement was aimed at building cultural bridges and enhancing intercultural dialogue between people on both banks of the Dniester/Nistru River. OSCE-supported concerts included performances in Teleneşti and Tiraspol by the Tiraspol-based Liberty band and the Madame Baheux ensemble, which brings together artists from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Serbia. Meanwhile, Moldovan artists from the Trigon and In Duo bands performed in Tiraspol alongside the Park Stickney Trio from the United States. As part of the Festival, some 35 students and teachers of music from the Art Institute of Tiraspol had the opportunity to hone their musicianship skills in a workshop conducted by Christoph Stiefel & Lisette Spinnler from Switzerland. The Ethno Jazz Festival has been held every year in Moldova since 2001. With the support of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, the Festival has been able to expand to other towns on both sides of the Dniester/Nistru River, including most recently Bălți, Comrat, Teleneşti and Tiraspol. Support non-profit journalism and perspectives from around the world. See all those languages? The Lingua project at Global Voices works to bring down barriers to understanding through translation. Ungheni is a town located much closer to the Romanian city of Iasi than to Chisinau which was often called “Western Gate.” In Soviet times the city was completely closed: you could only get there with prior authorization or special passes Today Ungheni is considered one of the key regions of Moldova and European flags are displayed  there even more often than in the capital Telenesti is a city that usually appears in the news only in crime reports This is the center of one of the least economically promising regions of Moldova One of the most notable enterprises is the production of tombstones NewsMaker correspondents learned what the locals live on why they talk about relations with Russia in terms of “slavery” and “colony,” why they love their city and how it happened that Telenesti became a city of five cemeteries Sholdanesti is a town in the central region of Moldova Most people know it best for the Soviet bunker that is located nearby Soldanesti was once an important industrial center Now the city appears in the news mainly because of a multi-story building which has been recognized as unsafe for many years NewsMaker correspondents went to Sholdanesti and found out how the famous bunker is being slowly taken away what local and central authorities are going to do with the building that is literally falling apart and its inhabitants and what locals are waiting for first and foremost Orhei is a small town in the center of Moldova Until recently it was a typical regional center Orhei became one of the symbols of Moldovan politics in general and the personal showcase of fugitive deputy Ilan Shor The video explores how the city lives today why the most unsociable residents ended up there Taraclia is a small town in the south of Moldova It is a place where the diaspora of  of Moldovan Bulgarians live the town has its own university and even a Bulgarian consulate sometimes there are no elevators in high-rise buildings or sidewalks on roads There they learned how local residents earn money why it is dangerous for some to approach their own home while others have been walking to the ninth floor for 20 years how life is going on in a city where there is almost no public transport and normal water Bessarabka is a southern town on the border with Ukraine which was built around and for the railway Now passenger trains don’t really run there and usual connections with the neighboring country have practically been interrupted The proximity of Ukraine frightens many local residents as Russia's invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022 NewsMaker correspondents went to Bessarabka and found out how the city (does not) preserve the heritage of the Jewish shtetl and the German settlement why even renovated schools cannot be approached by foot and why local residents are so afraid of filming from drones NewsMaker correspondents found out who gets what kind of salary and if the residents are still afraid of “5G towers.”  They have also discovered why people do not want to move from the town There will be other stories about Moldovan towns, promises NewsMaker, which can be followed on their website or YouTube channel ERROR: SECURITY TIMEOUT - Please copy your message to a backup location Global Voices stands out as one of the earliest and strongest examples of how media committed to building community and defending human rights can positively influence how people experience events happening beyond their own communities and national borders Please consider making a donation to help us continue this work Donate now Authors, please log in » Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Stay up to date about Global Voices and our mission. 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For more information please read our Fundraising Ethics Policy Special thanks to our many sponsors and funders there are invisible children in the Republic of Moldova children who are not officially registered and do not have an identity These children are not included in the statistics These undocumented children will remain on the edge of the "official" world for the rest of their lives The Center for Investigative Journalism found that there was a huge discrepancy between the number of live births and the number of birth certificates issued by the authorities in the last five years which means that so many children would not have identity documents because the number of documents issued each year is several thousand less than the number of children born in the Republic of Moldova Seven-month-old baby undocumented officially and his parents cannot complete his identity documents because his mother does not have any documents either From the maternity ward of the Mother and Child Institute she was given a confirmation stating only the birth the child's birth certificate cannot be completed "At the Mother and Child Center they did not want to issue us a certificate because I do not have an identity card I asked them to register him on my husband's name because he owned documents but they didn't want to but when we went to Telenesti to get the boy a birth certificate they told us that they could not register our child We took a lawyer from Chisinau to solve our problem we paid him 16 thousand lei but he always postpones it either because of covid The paradox is that Alina has another child whom she gave birth to at the maternity hospital in Telenesti and from there they issued her birth certificate based on which the parents could register the child The woman did not receive maternity leave and any child-raising allowances Although Alina's son is already seven months old no authority responsible for child protection was aware of the fact that this child is not officially registered and that he is at risk She and her brother Nicolae were born in Ukraine The parents did not officially register their marriage and the mother issued birth certificates for both children and registered them with her last name Even the children's father was registered in the certificates with the mother's family name - Dovghii Vitalii while his name is Margină (Marjina in IDs) and this is where the true meaning of life lies but her mother  gave her a birth certificate in Ukraine the mother left for Ukraine and left the children one was four years old and the other only six months old everyone knows Vitalie Margină and there were no problems when the children went to kindergarten or school They benefited from necessary medical care but Vitalie says that he did not even need it The boy faced problems when he had to complete his ID card because the children's father could not confirm that he was their father And here from visits to various state institutions but at the end of her studies she did not get the graduation certificate as she did not have an ID She could not even be officially hired to work The issue of documents became more and more pressing "We have been going to different institutions for six years but everywhere we are told that they did not have such a case and I do not know what to do At one point we were even recommended to go to Ukraine to complete their documents there if the two of them don't even have IDs " In 2015 they decided to take the paternity test The children went to court against their father to prove that he was their father They hired a lawyer and the trial lasted quite a while and Vitalie's paternity of his children was established the judge congratulated me on being a father but if it was officially decided that they were my children .. Even with the paternity test and the court's favorable decision things did not go well with the children's documentation Nicolae is 26 years old and still does not have any ID to hide when they perform checks at the construction companies where he works Three children were also born in his family but they are documented because their mother had documents The case of the undocumented child is unknown to the authorities guarantors of the protection of the rights of each child This is despite the fact that starting with 2014 there is a law on children at risk that obliges the guardianship authorities to monitor and to take action in the case of every child who is in a vulnerable situation by signing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has committed itself to respecting the rights of the child as a matter of priority The representatives of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection declared a few years ago that they will pass all the legislation and state policies through the prism of the child's rights so that every child can be protected knew the situation of Vitalie Margină's family but he did not know anything about the undocumented child "I know that this family had started the procedure for getting the documents no one addressed the mayor's office and respectively we did not know that he would have problems " The case from Negureni was not even known to the Child Protection Directorate in Telenesti admitted that she did not know that there was an undocumented child but promised that she would contact her mother immediately in order to get involved in solving the problem with the documents the birth certificate is issued based on the finding medical birth certificate issued by the health unit where the birth happened the report and the certificate stating the sex and age of the child - in the case of a child found The certificate confirming the birth and the birth certificate are issued only upon presentation by the mother of the identity card The lack of it makes it impossible to issue the certificate and which is recognized by the authorities and the law enforcement agencies According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child "a child is documented from the moment of birth and has the right to a name from that moment" This unequivocal wording is an obligation for all States which have ratified the Convention and require that this right be respected and protected We addressed the issue of undocumented children in a journalistic investigation in 2009 Then we investigated the case of Aliona Cantea from Orhei she ran away from the maternity ward through the window for fear that someone would take her child because she did not have ID Aliona Cantea's older son,  7 years old was initially not admitted to school on September 1 He was later enrolled after the publication of the "Unnamed Children" investigation to issue birth certificates to children in maternities The procedure seems to have worked quite well for a while but somewhere something has broken in this mechanism since it is not efficient now Aliona Cantea's case could not be solved by the Social Assistance from Orhei district The woman tried to go to the Civil Registry Office in the district to ask for her mother's death certificate The Social Assistance took action on behalf of the woman but received a bewildering answer from the Civil Registry - that the beneficiary must show up Cantea managed to complete her documents and made identity documents for her children as well we find that the situation has not changed The authorities have repeatedly promised to take measures to protect children at risk multidisciplinary teams have been set up in localities consisting of representatives of the Police Education and Health and the social worker who should coordinate their actions so that each child can be monitored and helped we compared the statistics on live births and the number of birth certificates issued by the authorities we found that the number of live births was several thousand times higher than the number of documents issued We requested from the Ministry of Health data on the number of live births in the last five years (2017 - 2021) and from the Public Services Agency - data on the number of birth certificates registered in the same period We took the general data for comparison each year The number of children born each year is several thousand more than the number of birth certificates issued as some parents whose children were born abroad from a locality in Telenesti district gave birth in Germany in July 2019 they also gave the boy a Moldovan birth certificate The child also has a German birth certificate With 2,726 fewer documents than children born Even if we admit that some of the children were registered the following year the statistics for 2018 are even more desolate but birth certificates were issued - 23,182 and the ASP services issued 29,152 certificates with 3,742 fewer documents than children born 31,215 children were born and 29,726 birth certificates issued 29,657 were born and 26,589 birth certificates were registered if we add up all the figures that show the difference between the number of live births and the number of birth certificates issued by the Moldovan authorities This would mean that more than 22,000 children who were born in the last five years do not have identity documents We do not yet have an official explanation for these statistics and this means that we will continue the investigation We requested the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection to tell us on the number of undocumented children in the Republic of Moldova The request is still in the legal term in which we can get an official reply at the time of publication of this material the 15 working days in which the public authority is obliged to reply to requests for information An official from the ministry contacted us to explain what we meant when we wrote undocumented children I told her that these were undocumented children and I deduced that it was difficult for her to understand that there could be officially undocumented children                                    Children's rights Ombudsperson: A failure of the authorities Children's rights Ombudsperson Maia Bănărescu admits that there are undocumented children in the Republic of Moldova She says that in 2017 she conducted a study on undocumented children and found that there were 189 officially undocumented children She then made a series of recommendations to the guardianship authorities to eliminate the issues related to children's documentation This year she would look at the extent to which the recommendations of the Children's rights Advocate were met "It is a failure of the guardianship authorities responsible for child protection The services do not communicate with each other Everyone does their work from here to here and almost no one cares They do not report on cases that end up to certain services The problem of undocumentation arises when the child arrives at a service We are talking about irresponsible parents who do not go to complete birth certificates or parents who do not have documents from generation to generation and it is a difficult procedure This is where the authorities must intervene to guide them The child's lawyer promises to deal with the case of Alina Dovghii from Negureni Maia Bănărescu also says that every town hall should have a child protection specialist but town halls do not have money for these specialists and they are not active yet although the law has been operational since 2014 The Children's rights Ombudsperson considers that child rights specialists should get a salary  from the public budget "Undocumented children at risk of trafficking" Elizaveta Iurcu has worked for many years as head of the Child Protection Department in Orhei She helped dozens of families to complete their children's documents a case investigated by the team of the Center for Investigative Journalism "Any child who is left out of the protection system is at enormous risk I had a case when a child was taken under another identity in the Russian Federation they went out through the Transnistrian region He was identified by authorities there as being detained for begging maternity certificates are issued and the number of cases of undocumented children in Orhei district has decreased " when I was at the Child Protection in Orhei Iurcu about the problem of children without identity documents and the difficult procedure of getting the identity and this is the interview children who do not have identity documents arrive every year and the organization tries to help them there are many high-risk refugee children in Ukraine "It is important to monitor these children who stay in Moldova or who have moved on because the risk of being exploited or trafficked is very high," says Mariana Ianachevici The team of the Center for Investigative Journalism will continue to document this topic Aliona Dolghii's case was referred to the Center by Aliona's mother-in-law If you know cases of undocumented children, please contact us at info@investigatii.md or info@anticoruptie.md The investigation is being carried out as part of the "Investigative Journalism for Transparency and Good Governance" project conducted by the Center for Journalistic Investigations with the financial support of the US Embassy in Moldova The content of the investigation is the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the US Embassy in Moldova Case study: How a prosecutor's wife tried to silence journalists A journalistic investigation into how a well-known and controversial prosecutor resorted to a fictitious divorce in order to hide the properties which could not be justified from the salary of the prosecutor's office turned for the Center for Investigative Journalism the author of the investigation and a civic activist in a fight for several years with state institutions and the prosecutor's wife literally harassed us right from the first documents She wrote complaints to several state institutions to the Police and the Prosecutor's Office houses and tens of thousands of euros donated by parents and relatives INSPECTORS FROM THE ANTICORRUPTION PROSECUTION VIDEO // Story of a bribe for prosecutors Property and interests of candidates for the seat of general prosecutor guarded by security companies with criminal past close to Vlad Plahotniuc and of “the thief in law” Makena Two private enterprises of over 100 that ensure security and detective services gained advantageous tenders for the security of state institutions for many years One of the companies belongs to an off-shore company who would be connected to the criminal authority Vladimir Moscalciuc these companies are targeted in dubious schemes illegal interceptions and other serious actions they are free to guard public institutions judges and prosecutors were (NOT) held accountable  when thousands of young people went out to protest against the April 5 parliamentary election fraud and police forces were mobilized to repress the peaceful protest hundreds of young people were detained forcefully Dozens of prosecutors and judges went to police commissariats and judged the young people maltreated for mass disorder or hooliganism without taking any attitude to police atrocities we find that several files were closed or suspended and the truth was not revealed Ten years after the violent actions of April 7 following a peaceful protest triggered by the authorities where hundreds of young people have been maltreated and tried in the police commissariats judge or policeman has ever been punished for abuses committed but only some of those who participated in the devastation of Parliament and Presidency buildings were punished who fled the country and wanted by Interpol All officials who somehow managed the actions of the police forces or were indifferent during the events of Greek magistrates did what justice in Moldova didn’t: former international expert sentenced to 2 years in prison for pedophilia more than MDL 127 million were allocated from the Chisinau municipality budget to provide with apartments some persons who sued the City Hall asking for housing or for concluding reconciliation transactions with it Among the beneficiaries of such apartments although they received apartments free of charge from the housing stock of Chisinau municipality have enriched themselves in the meantime with other dwellings: some of these being purchased at preferential prices facing alone the aggressors and the justice system „50 shadows“ of the billion dollar theft cases Every time when prosecutors are asked about the investigation of the billion dollar theft they invoke three criminal cases "Filat case" and "Platon case” that have had different "fates" since the start of the prosecution excesses on the side of prosecutors and judges and human rights violations in custody and detention were reported in two of these cases the first person concerned in a criminal case on the theft from Banca de Economii the case has "frozen" on the table of the Though they say that the relationships of colleagues from the period of study do not influence on their professional activity in any way several concrete cases prove that some judges and prosecutors have been promoted just in the period when their faculty colleagues served important posts in the justice system. You can see below the university colleagues of the chairman of the Supreme Court of Justice Mihai Poalelungi of the General Prosecutor Eduard Harunjen and of DOC // “Ghost” banker in Vlad Filat’s case A well-known Russian banker was attracted unknowingly in the controversial case of former PM Vlad Filat Former executive chairman of the Russian Petrocomerţ bank is accused  of  having met in February 2013 former general secretary of the Government Victor Bodiu  and they planned to take over a part of bad assets from Banca de Economii (BEM) taking bad loans worth about one billion lei by Roseau Alliance LLP was the first step in taking over the BEM scheme Reporters of the Center for Investigative Journalism found the banker but he does not know anything Apartments at low price for magistrate Oleg Melniciuc’s mother and relatives in the residential block for judges his mother and some of his relatives will get apartments and commercial property in the residential block on the street Hristo Botev 6 in Chisinau which is currently being built for the magistrates of Rascani District Court in the capital and for their children The magistrate himself who initially said that though he owned some  dwellings and  he would like some flats for his children but a commercial space. The president of the Superior Council of Magistracy Victor Micu received a flat in the who seem not to know about the situation in Moldova appear as key-witnesses in the resounding corruption case involving Vlad Filat According to statements made by Ilan Sor in court they would have brokered alleged bribery worth 320 million lei  to former Prime Minister These statements were accepted by the court and included in the sentence without inviting the youths for evidence Center for Investigative Journalism found the names of these girls and contacted two of them The girls claim that they have never beento Moldova and do not know  Ilan Sor  and 18 bln USD laundered through the judiciary in Moldova since 2010 (II) 18 bln USD laundered through the judiciary in Moldova since 2010 (I) The assets declared by judges: houses and cars at negligible costs Mihai Ghimpu and Nicolae Timofti have cautioned that those rejected do not have a place in the judiciary because they discredit Justice relations with businessmen conducting shady businesses the findings were based on the reports from the Information and Security Service (ISS) Despite the arguments brought by the rulers of the country SCM kept on position or even promoted around 55 judges some of them left the system honorably taking their sins with them The stories from www.anticoruptie.md may be used in the limit of up to 1,000 characters Web pages must indicate the source and link directly to the article Radio and TV stations must indicate the source Publishing full version of stories is allowed based on a prior agreement with the Center for Investigative Journalism Articles published on www.anticoruptie.md are protected by the Law on copyright and related rights of Republic of Moldova You don't have permissions to access this page