For Terre des hommes, advocacy is continuing
For Terre des hommes, advocacy is continuing
20 Mar 2013 ADOPTIONSWITZERLAND
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In recent years, international adoption ha, bit by bit, lost ground after repeated scandals linked to cases of abuse, trafficking and child prostitution. In our increasingly globalized world, the drift has gone so far that it is even possible to buy a child direct on the internet. Admittedly, irregularities, badly applied laws and procedures and individual shady cases have always existed in all the countries practising international adoption; on the other hand, the fact of a country and its entire system being corrupt is a more recent phenomenon. Among the States with a high risk of trafficking, one thinks primarily of Romania in the ‘90s, then of other countries like Guatemala, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Haiti and, more recently, Nepal and Ethiopia being accused of trafficking in children. Meanwhile, the pressure brought by the international community, particularly the host countries, has borne fruit and forced the countries of origin to review the way they function, their legislation and their procedures.
Inter-country adoption is declining
A constant fall in international adoptions has been recorded and the figures speak for themselves. The example of the United States is certainly the most significant in this regard. The number of adoptions there dropped from 24,000 to 9,300 between 2004 and 2011. Three main elements explain this collapse.
First of all, the ‘adoptable’ children no longer correspond to the criteria of the couples wanting to adopt. The children often have ‘special needs’ as they are older, mentally scarred by their past experiences, suffer from an illness or a disability, or because they cannot be separated from their siblings. In addition, experience has shown that when parents decide to adopt a child with any one of the above characteristics, the success of the adoption depends on psychosocial and suitable post-adoption support.
Secondly, some of the host countries, encouraged by child protection NGOs including Terre des hommes , have taken the decision to stop adoptions from certain countries of origin. Numerous cases of abuse have, in fact, been ascertained, from the refusal of the State to determine the legal status of a child (by the same token, making him/her adoptable) and passing through the falsification of identity papers to declare a child abandoned or an orphan.
Finally, as an example, countries such as Brazil and India have had a strong economic upswing since the beginning of the 21st century, favouring the emergence of an upper middle class. In India today, 75% of the children abandoned are now adopted within their own country. And yet only 15 years ago, noone even spoke about national adoption.
Give priority to leaving a child in its own surroundings
Above and beyond the statistics showing a significant drop in inter-country adoptions, if organizations like Tdh have decided to stop their international adoptions, it is above all because some countries of origin now have the means to keep the children within their frontiers. The majority of the players in the domain of child protection salute this evolution and advocate the development of alternatives to international adoption or institutionalization, such as domestic adoption or a system of foster families. This vision with the best interests of the child as its sole aim can be found written in black and white in two key texts for child protection, i.e. the Convention for the Rights of the Child and The Hague Convention.
The States who have ratifies these two texts are committed to implement appropriate measures to curb the abuses in international adoption by establishing more transparent procedures and increased collaboration between the host countries and the countries of origin. The Hague Convention in particular specifies that no State is obliged to ‘supply’ children to any host country. But above all, the text stipulates that each signatory State is committed to making every possible arrangement so that the child can grow up in its biological family, international adoption being the last resort.
Although the Convention is currently the best ethical and viable tool for setting up a system of collaboration between States, some countries such as Haiti and Nepal have not yet ratified it and the scandals continue, with the image of children sometimes proposed for international adoption by private people (lawyers, intermediaries, crèche superintendents). The objective is not to throw stones at the countries of origin – often very poor and under pressure from far richer host countries – but quite simply give them support. It should never be lost from view that a country’s legislative and strategic loopholes make the children even more vulnerable to abuse and trafficking. For this reason, Tdh is working hard to make the governments of Haiti and Nepal more aware of the problems related to international adoption in their countries. In Benin , Tdh has developed a project of host families where children who have been abused or abandoned can be cared for. And in Guinea , Tdh’s teams work closely with the authorities to set up laws for child protection.
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