Query: Please conduct a review of the available evidence on orphan traffickingi and how this is increasing the risks of children to exploitation and abuse in care institutions. Please include any evidence on: • The scale, nature and drivers of orphan trafficking including countries and regions of high prevalence. If possible, include the level of community awareness on this issue. • How orphan trafficking is increasing the risks of child exploitation and abuse and the gendered dynamics of this (i.e, child labour, CSEA, CEFM marriage)  • How profits are generated from trafficking children into institutions, beyond money generated from volunteering and tourism and evidence on where that majority of the money comes from (i.e tourists, volunteers, charity donations) • Does the situation of trafficking children into institutions differ between state-owned and privately-owned institutions, and what extent are governments involved and aware? • What is the strength of the evidence and where are the gaps?  • Effective prevention and response models from both a political and programmatic perspective and any barriers that have been encountered in trying to address the issue? 

In Switzerland, 14 cantons want to work more closely together to help adopted individuals find their biological parents. In the past, not everything was always done by the book.

Why were there so many international adoptions in the past?

In recent years, as economic and social conditions in Switzerland improved – especially for unmarried mothers – there were fewer children available to adopt within the small Alpine state. This led to some people looking to adopt from abroad. From the 1960s onwards, there was a wave of adoptions from Asian countries, and later from South America and Africa. From 1989, there was an increase in adoptions from Eastern Europe.

Fertility issues were not always the main reason for adopting. Some Swiss couples felt as though it was a “humanitarian act”. They wanted to rescue children from poverty due to their social or religious beliefs and offer them a better life with educational opportunities.

Developments in certain countries were also partly responsible. For example, the South Korean government reduced funding for social welfare systems for unmarried mothers and poor families and instead promoted large-scale international adoptions until the 1980s. In Sri Lanka, an adoption industry developed: lawyers, social workers, midwives, chauffeurs and hotels all profited from international adoptions.

In Switzerland, 14 cantons want to work more closely together to help adopted individuals find their biological parents. In the past, not everything was always done by the book.

Why were there so many international adoptions in the past?

For most adoptees, being adopted is just one piece of a multifaceted identity—and like other identity markers such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or personality, it’s often necessary to navigate feelings of uncertainty, pride vs. shame, and questions about who one is and where they’re meant to be in the world. Adoption has unique influences on identity formation as a child grows up and may require that children confront loss and feelings of rejection; it may also present distinct challenges in adulthood, particularly when it comes time to discuss family history that might be unknown. Though being adopted has its challenges as children grow into adults, many adult adoptees report feeling stronger for having navigated them—and may even end up feeling more connected to their adoptive families, their birth families, their cultures, and their inner selves as a result.

On This Page

• Growing Up Adopted
• Life as an Adult Adoptee

Growing Up Adopted

Nowadays, in the U.S. and other countries where formal adoption is common, most adoptive families start discussing adoption with their child from the moment they arrive home—thus, the “big reveal” in which a child suddenly finds out they’re adopted is less common than it once was (though not unheard of). Growing up knowing that one is adopted generally has beneficial effects on children’s mental health and sense of self. However, it also raises questions that the child will need to grapple with as they grow: What does it mean to be adopted? Does being placed for adoption mean that they were unwanted? Is it possible to truly fit in in one’s adopted world?

According to childhood researcher Sarah Alminde, adopted children can benefit from spending time with their biological family, but they must be able to decide for themselves.

- Poor adoptive parents... what a nightmare to go through.

- I would have done the same thing, fought tooth and nail.

- Where is the child's best interests?

When Anna ten Have traveled to Brazil in 2016 to find the biological mother of her adopted son, she found herself embarking on a nearly impossible task. Mothers in Brazil yearn for contact with their 'missing' children, but money for DNA testing? There is none. Anna is now changing that. "What we have seen is heartbreaking."
 

Anna ten Have (71) is currently in Brazil for the third time. This time in Manaus, in the middle of the Amazon. She and a number of other volunteers are visiting all kinds of women there to take DNA tests. Her goal? To bring mothers into contact with their children, often adopted abroad. "A test like that costs 50 euros. But most people in poor cities simply cannot afford that."

Anna from Woerden discovered this in 2016. In the 1980s, she and her husband adopted two children from Brazil. Nine years ago, she went looking for the biological mother of the youngest, Alfredo.

"We were approached by a Brazilian television program, similar to the Dutch Spoorloos," says Anna. "There were all kinds of women who signed up for the program and thought they were Alfredo's mother. Then DNA was taken from them."

Adoption plans for couples or single people over 60 are thus halted.

An earlier version of the story stated that adoptions have been suspended from a number of countries, following several revelations. It is true that Bufdir recommended a temporary halt to all foreign adoptions pending the completion of the Investigation Committee 's work, as they believed that the risk of illegality was real. The Ministry of Children and Family Affairs chose not to follow the recommendation from Bufdir. Bufdir has since rejected most applications for renewed mediation permits, so that in practice there has been a halt to adoptions from a number of countries.

There has been a lot of debate about adoption from abroad.

Now, one of the three organizations that has been conducting adoption has decided to cease operations.

This is stated in a letter sent out by "Children of the World" to its applicants. The organization has received money from the authorities in 2025, pending clarification on whether they can continue with adoptions in the future, but:

Kalanguak Absalonsen was born in Greenland in 1971 and adopted a few years later by a Danish family without her mother's informed consent, cutting her off from her Inuit culture for more than 50 years.

Now she wants Denmark to compensate her for her wrongful adoption.

"My mother didn't know what it meant when she signed the paper, that she wouldn't be allowed to have any contact with me," the 53-year-old told AFP in her Copenhagen apartment.

In 1975, her mother was a young widow with five children, struggling to make ends meet in Greenland at a time when Denmark had a strategy of cultural assimilation for its former Arctic colony, today an autonomous territory.

Her mother's employer, a Dane, suggested she consider putting some of her offspring up for adoption.

Charity finds ‘inhumane’ system is forcing women to defend themselves in court, sometimes from their hospital beds, while in fear of having their newborn child taken from them

Ella* gave birth to her daughter in a London hospital last week. Days later, still in the same busy ­hospital, she appeared via a laptop in a court hearing, challenging an application for an emergency order by the council, which wants to take her baby into care.

“I’m not eating properly. I can’t sleep because I’m terrified. I just want to go home with my baby,” she told the Observer this weekend. “I don’t feel they are giving me a chance.”

The use of DNA tests, banned in France, sheds light on long-hidden abuses committed with impunity over several decades: illegal adoptions, false birth certificates, etc. "Libé" has collected the testimony of children adopted in murky conditions and of a mother forced to abandon her.

In the playground, she would cheerfully answer: "My skin color is because I go to Spain all summer. The sun loves me." The explanation suited her, she is so dark and matte, and her parents are as fair as wheat. But the year she turned 10, she overheard her grandfather mention her "adoption." The ground beneath her feet cracked. The information steeped in her stomach for a long time without a word - her mother "freezes" at any attempt to discuss it, her father hardly better. Today, at 56, Blandine still doesn't know the precise circumstances of her birth. Especially since legally... she was not adopted. According to the civil registry, she was born to the Vignolles couple on November 1, 1968, "exactly as if my adoptive mother had given birth to me." No trace of abandonment or birth under X. The copy of her full birth certificate reveals nothing. "I was white as a baby, my mixed-race origins only became visible later. Without that, I might never have known anything."

When her parents die, she rummages through their documents and finds a cardboard folder stuck in the house construction plans. On this letterhead, typewritten: "The baby you asked for and I promised you