OPINION. 'Adoption is more than giving a warm home'

Few topics are as sensitive from a children's rights perspective as intercountry adoption. This has nothing to do with the demand for attention for children's rights. Both internationally and in Flanders there is great unanimity to use children's rights as the most important stepping stone for the organization of international adoption.

The frame of reference for this is the Hague Adoption Convention, an elaboration of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The treaty aims that intercountry adoption only takes place when the child benefits most and when his fundamental rights are respected. Our country has signed the Hague Adoption Convention. This is also reflected in the operation of the various services that are active around intercountry adoption.

Despite this great unanimity, we still have a knot. This knot has a lot to do with the way we view children and their poor living situation (in the south and elsewhere) to this day. Our gaze is characterized by pity and hope. Pity about the often precarious situations in which children live there or sometimes even simply trying to survive. Hope, because it concerns children and there is therefore the idea that these children can still be saved.

Intercountry adoption is then about providing a cozy and warm home to children who would otherwise continue to live in misery. That is noble and at the same time seems so obvious. Surely there is no one who doubts that these children have it so much better here? But still. The reality turns out to be so much more complex. An adoption decision has a huge impact on the life of the adopted child. After all, the child not only gets different parents, but sometimes also a different name and it grows up in a different environment and often in a different culture.

From the scant research that focuses on the perspective of the adopted children, we find that adoption involves both positive and negative feelings, often at the same time. For example, adopted children are happy with life here, but are also curious about what it could have been like in the family of origin. Feelings are often incomprehensible and especially inexplicable. For example, the outside world expects gratitude. Adoptive children find this difficult because they have not opted for adoption. That's what their parents did. They could be grateful. At the same time, they don't want to be ungrateful.

a good deal

In our recent advice on intercountry adoption, I tried to address this knot. For example, it is very important to us that there is a discussion and reflection about which children we consider to be eligible for intercountry adoption. For example, there is a tendency to adopt older children more often. This raises questions, among other things, about the supervision of these children, both during the preparation in the country of origin and when they arrive in our country. Are we able to provide this guidance? But also, do we think that a ten-year-old adopted child can maintain contact with the home front, its language and culture, or is it better for this child to cut all the wires right away? Or is the answer somewhere in the middle?

These are fundamental questions to which we are still very much looking for answers today. The websites of the Flemish international adoption services teach us that children often qualify for adoption because of poverty in their families. This means that intercountry adoption is not only about giving a new home to children from orphanages, but also to children whose parents are still alive. In our own country, we rightly see great caution in removing children who live in poverty from the family. Shouldn't we exercise the same caution for the group of children eligible for international adoption?

Intercountry adoption requires serious reflection. About the conditions under which we can allow the adoption of foreign children, but also about how we see the finality and objectives of adoption. It is with this in mind that I have also warned about the danger that children are sometimes presented as merchandise (DS 16 March).

That's not an attack on the adoptive parents. I'm not at all concerned with accusing this group of parents, let alone accusing them of child trafficking. What matters to me is that we have to be very careful with the language we use around international adoption. Presenting children as 'children who integrate well and adapt quickly' shows little respect for children and sounds a bit too much like promoting an interesting deal.

I am equally concerned with the way in which – including photo and video material – the living situation of children in their country of origin is presented in order to legitimize unilateral adoption. Nobody benefits from these kinds of performances. Not the adopted children, but neither do the adoptive parents.

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