How Many Orphans Are There in the World?
UNICEF’s answer for 2024 is 152 million children who have lost one or both parents. But that number means something different than most people think, and the numbers closest to our work are smaller and sharper.
152 million
children worldwide have lost one or both parents
UNICEF, 2024 data
4 out of 5
children living in institutions have a living parent; poverty, disability, and migration separate families, not death
Save the Children UK, 2009
2 million
children live in residential care worldwide
UNICEF, 2025 estimate
17,000 to under 600
children in Moldova's institutions, 1995 versus 2024; the orphanages closed, the need moved to families
CTWWC assessment for Moldova's Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, 2024
36,817
children in Moldova living without one or both parents who went abroad for work
Moldovan government statistical report, 2019
105,000+
children in Ukraine's institutions on the eve of the 2022 invasion, Europe's highest rate; 90% had a living parent
Human Rights Watch, 2023
20,610
Ukrainian children verified deported or forcibly displaced since 2022; 2,451 returned
Children of War platform, Office of the President of Ukraine, read August 2026
Nearly 3x
Europe places children in residential care at almost three times the global rate: 277 per 100,000 versus 102
UNICEF, September 2024
49.6 million
people in modern slavery on any given day; 12.3 million of them children
ILO, Walk Free and IOM, 2022
The statistic we exist to change
Numbers this large stop meaning anything. So here is one that stays small enough to feel: in Moldova, a country with one of the lowest incomes per person in Europe and a recognized origin country for human trafficking, a child who ages out of state care walks out of the gate in her mid-teens with no family waiting.
The US State Department’s 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report for Moldova lists children “aging out of” institutions and children “abandoned by parents migrating abroad” among the populations most vulnerable to trafficking. This is what happens when orphans age out, and the trafficking numbers are here.
The Orphan’s Hands exists for exactly that girl. We run family homes at Vatra Village in Moldova, where teens nobody came for are raised as sons and daughters: school, dinner around a table, a bedroom door with their name on it.
Sources
- UNICEF DATA, orphanhood (data.unicef.org)
- UNICEF, children in alternative care (data.unicef.org)
- UNICEF, Keeping Families Together in Europe, September 2024 (unicef.org)
- CTWWC, transformation of residential care in Moldova, 2024 (bettercarenetwork.org)
- Human Rights Watch, We Must Provide a Family, 2023 (hrw.org)
- Children of War platform, Office of the President of Ukraine (childrenofwar.gov.ua)
- ILO, Walk Free and IOM, Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, 2022 (ilo.org)
- US State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report: Moldova, 2025 (state.gov)
- Save the Children UK, Keeping Children Out of Harmful Institutions, 2009 (bettercarenetwork.org)
Figures carry their source and year because they differ by definition and vintage. Page reviewed August 2026.
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