Ghana: Gender Ministry to Regulate Child Adoption
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Ghana: Gender Ministry to Regulate Child Adoption
Government of Ghana (Accra)
Ghana: Gender Ministry to Regulate Child Adoption
BY KARIMATU ANAS/BENJAMIN TANDOH, 22 AUGUST 2013
PRESS RELEASE
Some inter-country adoptions have taken place without regard to due process and procedure as laid down in the Hague requirements which compel countries to permit
only agencies licensed by a given country to handle such adoptions.
As a result, the adoption of children have been handled in the various regions of Ghana without any central database having been captured at the headquarters of the
Department of Social Welfare (DSW), leading to a very scanty and unco-ordinated census on adoption in the country.
Currently, three international agencies have been licensed by DSW to handle inter-country adoptions, namely Adoptions Centrum of Sweden, Bethany of USA and AIBI
of Italy.
Hon Nana Oye Lithur, Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, who made these known at a news conference in Accra, yesterday, explained that the
moratorium declared on the 24th of March, 2013 by the Ministry on adoptions aimed to provide some space to streamline the procedure in order to effectively monitor
the process and to properly assemble such data.
Hon Lithur disclosed that certain review measures with regards to rules and regulations for foster care and adoptions would be put in place and that such measures
would culminate into the setting up of a Central Authority at the DSW which is a department under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.
In his remarks, the Acting Director of DSW, Mr Christopher Babooroh, said the moratorium became necessary following the discovery of a worrying trend in the adoption
of Children in a way that was detrimental to the welfare of the adopted children.
He explained that the temporary ban was, therefore, to enable the Ministry to ensure a re-engineering and review of the adoption processes in order to ensure best
practices for effective service delivery.
Source: ISD (Karimatu Anas/Benjamin Tandoh)
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