KennisBureau ter Meulen responds to report
Gera ter Meulen, KennisBureau ter Meulen, for Foster Care and Adoption
The Joustra Committee's research has yielded much good. She states in her report that in the past the government failed to take timely measures to combat abuses, which Minister Dekker acknowledges and for which he apologized. He is also taking measures to give adoptees more support in the search for their origins and to improve their legal position. And there will be an expertise center. This is all very positive.
However, the Joustra Committee also concludes that intercountry adoption remains vulnerable to abuses and that the current system cannot therefore be maintained. Intercountry adoption should be suspended. Based on my expertise as a scientist specializing in adoption and foster care, I have read the report carefully and have several critical comments on this last conclusion.
Children's rights
First of all, the scientific literature on which the Committee relies appears to be very one-sided and important articles that provide a broader picture of adoption as a child protection measure have not been included. It almost seems that those who focus on adoption abuses will at some point become trapped in one side of a reality and lose sight of other points of view such as child protection.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child also states that children have the right to safety, care, development opportunities and a family. In recent decades it has been discovered that this is not guaranteed in children's homes, that children's home care is even so harmful to children that the UN guidelines for Alternative Care stipulate that home care must be banned worldwide. Children are entitled to care in a family that provides adopted children with a better foundation than unstable foster care. The Committee does not include this point in its report.
Adoptions after 1998
The Joustra Committee looked explicitly at the period up to 1998, but also looked at abuses after 1998. It concludes that abuses in adoption cannot be ruled out. Mind you, abuses cannot and should not, but I do plead to look at the whole picture and do justice to all parties. You cannot put all the abuses together. For example, the report shows that many abuses in the past were linked to self-promoters and specific organizations, or to the culture in the country of origin. In India, for example, distance mothers gave false names because unmarried motherhood left them without a chance and could even put them in danger.
Research
In 2016, we at Leiden University conducted a questionnaire survey among 1,155 intercountry adoptees about their satisfaction with their lives and their emotions surrounding distance and adoption. We asked whether they had searched for information in their country of origin and whether it was correct. Because we linked this to the year of adoption, we saw that the percentage of inaccuracy in documents clearly decreased over time, certainly after 1992. Also, the participants who had been adopted more recently were more satisfied with distance and adoption than previously adopted people. The Committee has not included this aspect of time, while it does show that abuses decreased over time.
Current Adoptions
Although the Committee makes a decision about the present with its advice to suspend adoptions, the report shows that the Committee did not look at the changes in adoption practice after 1998. The current, changed adoption practice is not described in the report. Partly as a result of the Hague Adoption Convention, most children are now cared for in their own country. The vast majority of internationally adopted children have 'Special Needs'. Sometimes it is even difficult to find adoptive parents. Procedures to rule out abuses are so intensive that there are concerns about the additional damage children will suffer from the extended time spent in the homes. Furthermore, current practice strives for open adoptions, whereby contact with the birth family is maintained as much as possible. I therefore find the substantiation of the decision to suspend the current adoptions inadequate and therefore the decision too short-sighted. The report lacks some nuance. It would do more justice to the image of intercountry adoption if it paid more attention to the following points:
• A more complete cultural and anthropological framework of the situation in which children find themselves prior to adoption, reasons for distance and the consequences of home education. To this end, use must be made of leading scientific literature;
• A distinction between abuses that have a criminal background or a cultural background. It also makes sense to distinguish between abuses in distance and abuses in adoption;
• An overview of whether the number and type of abuses found has changed over time and the relationship with measures taken. Because Statistics Netherlands has conducted research, this can be carried out easily. How do the parties react to abuses nowadays and is this based on the interests of children? Abuses by self-perpetrators and demonstrably fraudulent adoption organizations are no longer relevant to current practice;
Opportunities
The committee is afraid that abuses cannot be ruled out, but the current time also offers opportunities, for example with the use of DNA databases. International adoption DNA databases with guaranteed privacy, which seeking adoptees and birth parents can use and which can also prevent false renunciation procedures during ongoing adoption procedures. The announced expertise center could play a role here. And let that expertise center have a scientific department, so that nuances and knowledge are more accessible.
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