Anke Hassel - new member PEAR Open Forum
From: Anke Hassel
Date: July 5, 2010 6:24:29 AM ADT
To: "PEARopenforum@yahoogroups.com"
Subject: [PEARopenforum] New member
Reply-To: PEARopenforum@yahoogroups.com
Hi,
my name is Anke. I am a German with a British husband living in London. We adopted a 6 year old girl from Ethiopia through a German agency last summer.
While we have no reason to doubt the story of our daughter, we have since observed a number of developments which makes us feel uneasy about the procedures of IA from Ethiopia to Germany. (We have met the aunt of our daughter and talked about her background extensively and she is old enough to know.)
So far, there has been one case in the press of a boy whose father was approached by a middle-man in rural Ethiopia with the suggestion to give up his son. The boy was then placed in Gelgela orphanage and subsequently transfered to the German agency Eltern fuer Afrika. Also there are a number of cases, where girls have been placed who are considerably older than their official age. Finally, the German courts are increasingly unwilling to go along with the paperwork from Ethiopia. In one case, the courts have twice denied the recognition of the Ethiopian adoption arguing that not enough efforts had been made to find the parents of the abandoned child who therefore could not give their consent to the adoption. This has created a nightmare situation for the parents who will have to deal with social services and immigration authorities long-term since they are now treated as foster parents of a child of foreign nationality.
Compared to the US, adoptions from Ethiopia to Germany are tiny. Last year, 47 children were adopted. There are two adoption agencies. One church-based agency has a long standing record of being in the country for more than 20 years. They only deal with state run orphanages. They are pretty conservative and have been shocked by the rather recent arrival of US agencies and their practices. They find it hard to adjust to the new situation and have almost been pushed out of the system since orphanages did not want to place children with them any more. But they are also slow in taking up the issue of ethical concerns. The other one is new and more American in its approach. They run a transit home in Addis Abeba and process a larger number of cases. As one can imagine within the AP community there is some rivalry of who went along with the more ethical organization and discussions can be difficult because of this.
Within the German community and the Ethiopia-adoption forum there are a handful of parents who share this view and we look for ways of addressing the issue. Some parents have started thinking of organizing a public event involving judges, agencies and parents. For my part, I am intending to write a report on Adoptions from Ethiopia for current and prospective adoptive parents to raise awareness and inform about ethical issues. At least no-one should be able to say that they did not know about it. In that context, either separately or as part of the exercise, I would like to run something like the PEAR survey on Ethiopia in Germany to document cases of questionable procedures.
The PEAR blog on Ethiopia has helped my understanding a lot and I would like to thank you for the effort. If you have any other evidence relating to Germany, I would appreciate it.
I am looking forward to being part of the PEAR discussions in the future
Anke
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