Adoptions From Guatemala Face an Uncertain Future

Author: Lynette Clemetson
Date: Thursday, May 17, 2007

After successfully adopting a child from Guatemala two years ago, Mary Vertin and Mark Huepfel are trying to adopt another from the country. This time around, though, the process has been fraught with uncertainty.

The couple’s adoption agency, Children’s Home Society and Family Services, based in St. Paul, has encouraged them to consider other countries. The State Department fact sheet on adopting from the country states, “We cannot recommend adoptions from Guatemala at this time,” citing unethical

practices. There have been signs that American adoptions from Guatemala — the second most popular destination for overseas adoptions, behind China — may end.

“In the end we wanted to do this,” said Ms. Vertin, 46, a special education teacher who lives in Houlton, Wis. “And we felt we know the risks and we trust our agency. We’re hoping for the best.”

The Guatemalan Congress dampened hopes for an imminent overhaul of the system yesterday by failing to pass a bill recognizing the country’s endorsement of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, a multilateral treaty intended to reduce corruption by standardizing international adoption procedures.

The United States expects to ratify the treaty late this year and begin enforcing it early next year. Guatemala’s president endorsed the convention in 2003, but constitutional challenges have slowed enactment.

“We’ve been very clear that if Guatemala does not implement the treaty by the time we are implementing the treaty, that we cannot do adoptions with Guatemala,” said Catherine Barry, deputy assistant secretary for overseas citizens services at the State Department.

Guatemala’s Congress begins its summer recess today and will not reconvene until Aug. 1. It could convene a special session to consider the Hague Convention bill or revisit it in the fall. But a lack of action this session lessens the likelihood that the country can come into compliance with the treaty this year.

More than 70 countries have endorsed the Hague Convention, including China and Guatemala, which have extensive programs with American adoption agencies. Last year 6,493 children came to the United States from China, and 4,135 from Guatemala.

The Hague treaty is intended to increase transparency in the adoption process. The hope is that standardizing the process will help eliminate unethical practices such as coerced relinquishment of children, kidnapping and payoffs to middlemen who procure children for adoption.

The treaty will also raise standards for adoption agencies and practitioners, requiring them to be accredited to handle adoptions with other countries who have signed the treaty. Once the United States ratifies the convention, adoption service providers would lose their accreditation

for working with unethical partners overseas.

While individual states and counties will still control domestic adoption, the State Department will become the federal regulating agency in charge of intercountry adoptions.

The United States signed the Hague treaty in 1994 but has spent more than a decade creating the legislative and regulatory framework necessary to govern the adoption process. Over the years there have been public complaints and concerns about the treaty from American adoption agencies,

and families have worried that the framework would slow down, or even derail, adoption programs with some countries.

But many adoption workers believe that enacting the treaty will ultimately be beneficial. “For our organizations, it will allow us a more secure system, and we look forward to that,” said Margi Miller, director of international adoption programs for Children’s Home Society and Family Services.

More than 300 adoption service providers have applied to the State Department for accreditation. Ms. Barry said the accreditation process should be complete late this year, allowing for ratification of the treaty.

Not all countries that currently have adoption programs with the United States are party to the treaty. Russia and Ethiopia, for example, have not signed the agreement. American service providers will still be able to process adoptions with those countries, based on existing bilateral agreements between the governments.

Compliance has been the central tension with Guatemala, which has yet to agree on a central authority to oversee the adoption system and has not developed legislation to enforce the treaty.

The current system in Guatemala is controlled by lawyers, who find and match children to adoptive families. But the system is believed to be rife with corruption. According to the State Department, there is widespread evidence of lawyers coercing birth mothers to relinquish children for adoption or paying women, some teenagers, to conceive children solely for the purpose of adoption.

Many adoption providers in the United States say they require extensive checks of the lawyers they work with in Guatemala. And the State Department requires DNA testing in Guatemala to confirm that the woman relinquishing the child is actually the birth mother.

Ms. Vertin and Mr. Huepfel, who have three biological children in addition to the son they adopted, have received a referral from Guatemalan lawyers on an 8-month-old boy who is available for adoption, but medical and bureaucratic certifications are needed. The family is months away from finalizing an adoption.

Still, they are hopeful that they will be able to adopt the child before the treaty goes into effect in the United States. State Department officials say that an end to adoptions with Guatemala would only affect new petitions, filed after the convention is put into force.

Ms. Vertin said she generally supported the goals of the Hague Convention, but she worried about the families, both in the United States and abroad, who might fall through the cracks once it was enacted.

“I think the convention will be a good thing eventually,” she said, “But what happens until then? In Guatemala, at least, a lot of people are still going to continue to have babies and not be able to care for them. And so what will happen to those children and those mothers?”