Operation Cover UP

With 80% of its 4.5 million population living below the poverty line, Moldova is listed as Europe's poorest country.

Since WWII Moldova had been under Soviet rule; all industry and commerce was state owner, and all agriculture was collectively worked state farms. When the Soviet system collapsed in 1991 this legacy left the newly independent Moldova with staggering problems. Antiquated Industrial plants, all built without concerns for toxic waste disposal, had been leaking and dumping toxic chemicals into the soil and water supply for 50 years so had to be closed creating widespread unemployment.

Moldova's lack of general infrastructure means running hot water is unknown outside of the capital city of Chisinau, even today.

Agricultural practices such as overuse of pesticides, herbicides, and artificial fertilizers intended to increase agricultural output at all costs, without regard for the environmental consequences. As a result Moldova's soil and groundwater are heavily contaminated by lingering chemicals, including DDT. Because education in better farming practices is unavailable, and soil degradation so severe, agricultural production since Independence in 1991 has been in serious decline, despite per hectare use of expensive imported chemical fertilizers and pesticides is currently 20 times that of most western nations. Spring freezes, summer floods and the worst drought in fifty years from 1990 to 1994 further decreased agricultural production 73% and 800,000 tons of wheat, which Moldova usually exported, needed to be imported. Additionally, the destruction of forests for cooking fuel also continues to cause extensive soil erosion and landslides of Moldova's rugged landscape.

Without oil, minerals or other natural resources to exploit, such massive land and water contamination has created severe poverty, high unemployment, upsurges in crime, bureaucratic corruption, Mafia rule, a police force not averse to racketeering, declining human rights, and villagers driven by hunger to selling their kidneys for paltry sums and hand their children into orphanages already overcrowded from the old Soviet policy of encouraging large families to increase their labour force. Still today, infant mortality is 43 per 1000 births.

In 2005 'Operation Cover-up' New Zealand shipped a 20 foot container of blankets, quilts and warm clothing to the orphans of Moldova.