Reforming international adoption

For several years now, we are confronted with reports about unethical practices in adoption procedures in Ethiopia. There is evidence that structures have developed over time in which children are placed for adoption by criminal methods using corruption, lies and the falsification of documents. The primary reason for these adoptions are not humanitarian but financial. There is a growing demand for small children, and even older children are abandoned by parents for adoption. Parents hope that their children have opportunities abroad which they cannot provide at home. To simplify placement procedures, papers are forged and false statements are made. Children are robbed of their right to know their origin and first family. The basis of trust on which a new adoptive family can develop is undermined by these practices. 

As adoptive parents, we know that Ethiopia is currently not in a position to care for all its abandoned children. International adoption are measures of individual care, which can not solve the problem of poverty and underdevelopment - nor should it aim to do so. However, this generally useful practice of individual assistance is increasingly discredited through unethical practices.

We call on the authorities to take the following measures to combat criminal practices (trafficking, fraud, corruption, forgery of administrative documents) in international adoption:

1. Adoption placements must only be made on the basis of complete documentation of the biological family of the child and the circumstances of abandonement. Testimonies about the situation of abandonement must be obtained and documented. Adoption agencies are responsible for the veracity of the documentation. The relevant courts, immigration and youth authorities are requested to ask for this information. 
2. Adoption agencies are requested to establish and maintain contact between adoptive parents and the family of origin if at all possible. Direct contact prevents lies about the family situation and helps the child in its further development.
3. All payments in the context of an international adoption must be documented and justified. Payments to families and intermediaries for the supply of children must be prohibited by cost transparency. All fees must reflect real efforts and costs.  Otherwise, they are a covert form of child trafficking.

Quotas for cutting the number of placements

We have now received (unconfirmed) information that the cuts of placements as decided by the Ethiopian Government is implemented by a quota which is operated for each adoption agency. Apparently the government aims to limit the number of placements to 2 adoptions per month for each agency. German agencies are therefore hardly affected since the total number of adoptions per agency was not much higher. The much larger U.S. American agencies are likely to be hit more severely.

Moreover, the reasons for the measure are not only the manipulation of paperwork and document in preparation of the placement. Also the attitude and behaviour of adoptive parents in Ethiopia, which were perceived as sometimes condescending or even degrading seems to have triggered the decision.

International Open Adoption

While in Germany open adoption has now informally become the standard, this is not the case in international adoption. Why actually? Thinking from the perspective of the child, which should be at the centre of all placements, contact with the first family is a valuable if not integral part of their identity.

The current practice so far largely prevented contact with the first family. Sometimes it is possible to meet the family of the child, when picking it up. But even that is not a compulsory part of the programme. Adoptive parents are rather discouraged by agencies who point out that the first family could ask for money, or express their expectation that their children would provide for them from Germany. One would rather avoid these scenes by not meeting the family. This abrupt cutting of ties with the first family is compensated at a later stage when parents or the agency take them to the country and visit the orphanage. Then it is usually too late to get in touch with the family of origin: many contacts are lost, much has happened in the family, grandparents have died and children are born. Families might leave their villages and move on.

It is time to change the practice. Liaising with the first family should play a much larger role in the adoption process. The careful documentation of family relationships and face to face contact prevent corruption and child trafficking. It makes it much harder for traffickers, orphanages and agencies to cover up shady deals. In addition, a permanent contact helps to deal with identity issues of the child. This contact can take the form of regular exchanges of reports and photos - and if it is only a card for Christmas and birthdays. A search for one's roots is largely redundant, if the roots are always known. Nagging questions about the reasons of the adoption can be made easier and also answered if the addressees are tangible.

So far there is hardly any structure for this. Therefore, adoptive parents must take action themselves. The first step in the direction of open adoption is taken at the point of the pick up of the child. If the agency is unwilling to organize a meeting, parents should persist and only accept good reasons (e.g., violence and abuse in the family).

The meeting with the first family should be well prepared. If possible, it should take place in two separate parts. The first part is about getting to know each other and saying farewell to the child. It is quite appropriate to give small (not expensive, but attentive) gifts. The family can give the child their blessing and thereby facilitate a good start for the new family. The adoptive parents get an impression of the family and learn a lot about their child. The child learns that her first family has trust in her new parents.

In a separate part, there should be a meeting in a quiet atmosphere and in the absence of the child. In that meeting the family history with names, birth dates and places of residence, as well as the relationships, major events and diseases in the family are documented in detail. This is also the moment to check out inconsistencies in the social report. Conversely, adoptive parents should be prepared to pass on the own family history including address and phone number to the first family.

What to do if the child was found abandoned? Here, the search for the first family is the starting point. This is significantly more difficult but not impossible. A visit to the site of abandonment is important - for reasons documentation for the child, but also to ask questions. You can leave business cards and hire a searcher to find clues to the origin of the child. Beware, this is not easy in a country like Ethiopia but a mere attempt can show agencies and authorities that one does not lightly accept abandonement reports. Tipps for such a search in China you can find here. 

In the long term, open adoption is the only ethical way in international adoption. When children are placed in a new family, they have two families. It is time to accept this and learn how to handle it. 

The Myth We Love

'The lie we love' was published in the winter of 2008, in Foreign Policy Magazine. The journalist E.J. Graff analyzed the myth of the millions of abandoned children (babies) in orphanages in poor countries who are waiting to be saved by Western families. The myth was that in reality most children in orphanages have parents and are either sick or older; the babies who are adopted have been placed for adoption with dubious methods or through trafficking. The culprits are not the adopting parents who have good intentious but are largely naive, but middle men (and women), orphanages, authorities and agencies which demand and earn high fees in the transaction of placing children for adoption.

There is enough evidence for this argument. Baby trafficking took place in Guatemala and more recently in China. Child abductions are known from India and Nepal. There are unscrupulous orphanages in most countries, that place children abroad. Reports like this are useful for alerting the public and making clear to those concerned that the public has an eye on their practices.

At the same time, scandalizing reports like this cover as much as they unveil. They aim to mobilize rather than  inform. They emphasize on the fraud and pars pro toto insinuate that fraud is endemic in the system as a whole. By doing so they perpetuate another myth.

The other myth is that international adoption is an unregulated industry. (The use of the terms 'industry' and 'markets for babies' in these reports are deliberate innuendos to highlight that children are treated as commodities.) This is a popular but false assertion. Any adoption recognition of a foreign court by a German, any visa application and naturalization of internationally adopted children is mediated by the state and highly regulated. German courts regularly reject requests for legal recognition, if the procedures do not fulfill German standards of adoption and alternative forms of care were not checked. This hurts the families, but it is enough to make agencies taking the existing regulation more seriously. 

The same is true for the US. If the American embassy staff  feel "uneasy" with many visa applications (Graff, p. 65), then they have a duty to act. And in contrast to the myth of unregulated industry American embassies have acted in the past. Last year, 80 adopting families were stranded in Nepal due to embassy action; currently Cambodia is in the spotlight. Countries have been completely closed for IA by receiving countries due to corruption and trafficking. As a result, there are steadily falling numbers of adoptions and more and more countries closed for adoption despite the myth of a networked and seemingly profitable industry backed up by a powerful political lobby.

The point is not to excuse any trafficking or corruption in international adoption, which clearly takes place. There are too many irregularities and corrupt middlemen in many procedures. The existing regulation via  issuance of visas and recognition procedures of court is too indirect, bureaucratic and often painfully slow. This is undisputed. However, the image of an unregulated industry entirely governed by greed, corruption and lies is equally a myth - just like the millions of orphaned babies waiting to be rescued. It is an image that is portrayed as a counterpart to the idyll of the loving adoptive family in a world full of scandals. The truth is, as is so often, somewhere in the middle: complex, complicated and less suitable for a good story.

Better Care Network

In 2003, UN agencies, the US development agency USAID and NGOs (save the Children UK) set up the Better Care Network. Since 2005 it has a steering committe under the umbrella of UNICEF in New York. The work of the network is aimed at filling the gap between the recognition that children have a right to a family, and the fact that millions of children are in institutional care.  About one million children lost their parents in armed conflict; more than 15 million children have lost one or both parents due to AIDS. In many countries, institutional care is still the answer to poverty and broken families. In even more countries, there are only a few measures which ensure that these children are adequately cared for by foster families. There is a great need for alternatives to institutional care if a separation of the parents is inevitable or has already taken place.

In November 2009, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution in which it welcomed the "Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children" in connection with the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the rights of the children. The guidelines are worth reading, as they place a priority on preventing abandonement of children. The parents or guardian of a child, who are in the process of abandoning the child need to be supported and counselled on potential alternatives. The reintegration of the family is a priority. Only if the reintegration of the family is not guaranteed, are other forms of care of abandoned children can be taken into account. These include the adoption and Kafala in addition to foster families and family-like accommodation. Necessity and appropriateness are the keywords of the guidelines. They are an important step forward.

Defining and Implementing Ethics in IA

The issue of ethics in IA is not new and therefore there are a number of documents which the discussion can draw upon. First and foremost these are the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, as well as the Hague Convention of 1993, to which we have already referred.

In addition, there are other documents that define ethical principles which must guide IA.  A comprehensive catalog of principle was published by the Swiss organization Service Social International (SSI) which was developed in collaboration with experts throughout the world. Similarly, the European umbrella organisation of adoption agencies euradopt has adopted a set of ethical principles which are similar to those of SSI.

The principles are likely to be universally shared - unless by those who reject IA in principle. However it quickly becomes clear that well-meaning principles are often out of touch with the real world. This concerns particularly the documentation of the origin of the child, social and medical reports, the attempts to place children in local communities, the prevention of abandonement and many more.

How can we strengthen the practice if agencies are willing to commit to ethical principles? For instance, public agencies such as social services, embassies and national courts could make stronger demands regarding the quality of the paperwork. They could demand more research on the family of origin, the identity of the parents and extended family, their consent and knowledge of the adoption. They could be more active as supervisory authorities if incorrect information in the course of adoption is known and initiate follow up procedures including compensation for mistreated families and children. They could hold the agencies to account on the basis of the principles they themselves defined and agreed to.

Also, agencies could be far more active. The ethical standards of Euradopt are reactive in nature; the organisation reacts only if scandals arise and the consequences are minimal. Agencies could set up due diligences processes including certification of ethical procedures, documentation on how they comply with the ethical principles in their work. They could document their post-adoption services and support structures.  They could publish annual reports, which document the measures on the implementation of ethical principles.

Adoptive parents in turn could demand ethical procedures and practices in the adoption process. They could choose their agencies not only on the basis of the duration of the proceedings (or the costs) but also with regard to the ethical standards of the agency. They could spread the word about more and less ethical agencies and inform other parents.

All three sides could tackle the issue head on and cooperate. They could share their experiences, awareness, name and shame those, who do not live up to ethical standards, report malpractice and thus spread the word in favour of ethical IA. They could sign voluntary pledges and proof of practices.  There are many ways. 

First published in German, May 22nd 2011. 

The risk of harm

Ethical issues in international adoption do not only concern the adoption process, but also the institutional care of children. Adoptions are only justified, if they are more beneficial and therefore in the interests of the child compared to institutional care. For more than fifty years there has been empirical research on the topic of effects of institutional care. As an example of a so-called meta study (a study that summarizes the results of other studies) we cite the paper by Johnson et al. referenced, which selected 27 studies from a total of over 2,500 empirical studies and summed up the results.

Early institutional care has the following effects on children:

• physical underdevelopment (weight, size, and head circumference)
• Hearing and visual impairment
• delayed motor development
• poorer health generally
• Learning difficulties
• social problems
• attachment problems
• emotional problems
• lower intelligence
• reduced cognitive performance

The study also shows using the example of Romanian children who were adopted to the United Kingdom, that this early damage is repairable, when they are placed in families, who provide a supportive environment.

The study concludes with the following words: "Analytical epidemiological study designs
(i.e., including a control and/or comparison group) show that young children placed in institutional care without parents are at risk of harm in terms of attachment disorder and developmental delays in social, behavioral and cognitive domains. Delays in physical growth, neural atrophy and abnormal brain development have also been implicated in studies of children in institutional care. The neglect and damage caused by privation is equivalent to violence to a young child."

 

In response to comment we would like to point out that none of the authors were financed by adoption agencies and at least one of the authors of the study is an outspoken opponent of international adoptions.

First published in German on May 18^th, 2011.

How do children end up in institutional care?

A comment on our German blog asked this question. This is an important issue, because institutional care is the key decision for a potential adoption. Only an abandoned and parentless child needs new parents. A placement in an orphanage for a period of time is usually seen as evidence that the child was abandoned. There are two arguments that are run by adoption critics on this issue.

The first argument states that adoption in itself leads to the abandonment of children. Because there is the possibility of adoption, parents or relatives are prepared to give up their children in hope of a better life. Fewer children would be abandoned without the option of adoption. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for this claim (apart from a highly controversial study), although the evidence would be not so hard to provide. Many countries do not allow foreign adoptions at all. Are there fewer children in care compared to countries with international adoption? Did the number of abandoned children increase in Ethiopia, since the increase of adoptions? Is this due to adoptions? Does the demand create the supply? We do not know it and are grateful for any reliable evidence. However, we should not forget that UNICEF estimates the number of (semi) orphans in Ethiopia at just under 5 million and the number of adoptions was so far no higher than 5000 in the year. This is less than a thousandth. This is not to gloss over the problems of corruption but merely to point out that there is most likely a real need which is not addressed by removing adoptions altogether.

The second argument is about a different approach towards institutional care in poorer countries. Parents bring their children to orphanages, because they can temporarily not care  for them. Or in order to provide them a better education. This is confirmed in this report on child trafficking in Nepal. It is obvious that these are not adoptable children. Where children have caring parents, they are not orphans or abandoned. As the report makes clear, some orphanages keep children away from their parents, because they receive funding in the case of adoption. This is a criminal offence.

To eliminate corruption and trafficking of children, the process of placing children in institutional care must be carefully documented and documentation must be checked. Direct financial assistance for adoption must be regulated, limited and in the case of institutional care stopped. There must be no financial incentive for abandoning a child, neither for orphanages nor for parents or relatives.

Adoptions may be an individual solution for abandoned children but must never be a reason to abandon children.

First published in German on May 11^th, 2011.

What are ethical international adoptions?

As a comment to the post "what is behind the Mowa decision?" we were asked: how do you define ethical international adoptions? This is a difficult question, but there are some explanatory notes on our website and a short answer is the following: An ethical international adoption is an individual measure for children without parents in the interest of the child, in order to avoid institutional care. The ethical side includes the following:

• a true and comprehensive documentation of the origin, the family development and physical and mental health of the child analog to the procedures of domestic adoptions;
• the exclusion of financial, political or other private interest in the adoption;
• the comprehensive information of the family of origin of the adoption process and the consequences of an adoption including respect for the rights of the parents;
• when it affects older children it includes also participation of the child in the adoption process;
• the comprehensive preparation and care for the adopting family regarding all aspects relating to the child.

If these criteria are met, an adoption is a useful measure for the benefit of the child even across borders.

First pubished in German on May 10th, 2011.

What is behind the MOWA decision?

Early March 2011 the Ethiopian Government decided to reduce the number of adoption so far 50 to 5 per day allegedly in order to improve the procedure and to examine the underlying documentation of abandoned children. What were the reasons leading to the decision? In short: we don't know the answer. The blogosphere of adoption activists has found no convincing explanation for this move. However, there are a number of theories circulating:

• There is one assumption that the Ethiopian Government has excavated the UN Convention on the rights of the child from their drawers and now would like to take it seriously. This seems to be more than naive in light of reports of ongoing human rights violations in Ethiopia.
• Another explanation is based on an increasing pressure of international organizations. UNICEF is critical of the adoption procedures in Ethiopia. We do not know of any position openly threatening with the withdrawal of aid in the context of adoption procedures.
• The US Government could have prompted the decision. On the one hand, it is under massive pressure from the adoption lobby, on the other hand, both the embassy and the USCIS immigration have major problems with the processing visa of obviously incorrect adoption decisions.
• Little is known about conflicts and corruption within the Government. However, there were changes in personnel in the Ministry. 
• There are conflicts between the federal government and Southern Ethiopian regional administrations and rebel organisations fighting the government. It is alleged that rebels use international adoptions for securing new sources of funding. There are unconfirmed rumors that the government aims to cut the financial flows to rebel groups by reducing the number of adoptions from southern Ethiopia.

Depending on the motivation different conclusions can be drawn about the seriousness of the efforts of the government. It is clear that a reduction in the number of cases alone does not reform the process. Rather, there is a risk that lower numbers of placements and a reduced commitment of agencies can lead to worsening conditions in orphanages, which is then answered by a new wave of unregulated adoption. Whether the decision of MOWA is a first step in the right direction, or rather a bargaining chip, remains open.

First published in German on May 8th, 2011.

Hitting, Smacking, Yelling - Silence

After the meeting of the US State Department with stakeholders on adoptions from Ethiopia on January 24th, there was a broad discussion about the insufficient documentation of the origin of adopted children as well as the practices of agencies, the Ethiopian authorities and courts.

To one of the subjects dealt with at the Conference there were hardly any reactions even though it was in the final ' 4 take-home messages for adoptive parents'. The second of these messages is according to the protocol of the Organization 'ethica':

Adoptive parents should seek out pre-adoptive education on child development and attachment. They should check their attitudes when in-country, but more than that, realize that practices such as hitting, smacking, or yelling at children are extremely harmful for both the children themselves and the future of the program.

That something seemingly obvious is stressed in such a way (and must be?), is yet notable. And perhaps also significant. The preparation and education of future adoptive parents on behaviour abroad and the treatment of children in public.

And in private? The bad impression that adoptive parents leave in the host country if they shout at or smack their children, threatens the adoption programme as a whole. But what will happen to them at home? You can guess how these children might fare in the future and which (new) injuries are inflicted to them.

On this point: Silence.

First published in German on April 11th, 2011

How helpful is The Hague Convention?

When dealing with ethical issues in international adoptions one cannot ignore the Hague Convention of 1993. The Hague Convention established an intergovernmental consensus that parentless children should grow up in a family and allows for the case that no family in the country can be found international adoption as a reasonable measure for providing care for children. In order to prevent abuse and corruption, rules of procedure for the accreditation of agencies and a government supervision are arranged. Does the Hague Convention help to prevent unethical practices? 

The experience of the last 18 years is not overwhelmingly positive. While the number of international adoptions declines, this is not true for the of corruption and abuse. Countries close their adoption programs rather than that they introduce sustainable ethical procedures. On the other hand, the large sending and receiving countries, such as China, Russia, Ethiopia and the United States, have either not signed the Hague Convention or only recently. Is a stricter application of the Hague Convention the solution?

In a comprehensive legal and empirical analysis the lawyer and adoptive father David Smolin has examined the potential of the Hague Convention. He comes to the conclusion that ratification alone hardly helps to change practices. Rather the following conditions must be met in addition in order to give life to the Convention:

1. Financial incentives through taxes and donations must be regulated, limited and made transparent.
2. Receiving countries have to accept responsibility for the ethical standards in the sending countries.
3. Known cases of child trafficking in foreign adoption must be publicly examined and taken as an opportunity to improve the process.
4. Receiving countries which have ratified the Hague Convention (in particular the United States) must apply the same standards to countries that have not in order to stop unethical agencies from moving from one country with weak regulation to the next (such as from Guatemala to Ethiopia).

According to Smolin, the future of foreign adoption is threatened not by ideological debates (such as the accusation of neo-colonialism). Rather, the failure of those responsible to establish sustainable and ethically correct procedures despite the large financial resources that are spent lead to an increasingly sceptical attitude of sender countries and regularly to the closure of adoption programmes, rather than for their better regulation. In other words: The adoption advocates who turn a blind eye to ethical questions, undermine the process in the long run, because scandals lead to a reduction of foreign adoption. Perhaps this is a sign for hope.

First published in German on April 27th, 2011.

Striking anomalies

On April 6th 2011 a conference of the American Immigration authority USCIS with agencies and parents took place. The USCIS officials had carried out a study of the situation in Ethiopia in January 2011. American adoptive parents at the Embassy must prove that the child is an orphan and adoptable in line with American legislation in order to obtain a visa for an adopted child. Increasing evidence of irregularities and the ever increasing number of adoptions make it difficult for the embassy to issue visa.

A presentation by the USCIS with the results of the study was presented at the Conference. On page 14 of the presentation, the following anomalies in recruitment agencies / orphanages are presented as a reason for further investigations of the USCIS and are seen as potential evidence for unethical practices by the Agency:

• an unusual age distribution of placed children (meaning a high proportion of babies);
• an unusual high number of abandoned children;
• an unusually high number of children abandoned by other relatives than parents;
• exclusive relationships between orphanages and agencies.

In the subsequent discussion, it became clear that the burden of proof for the proper documentation of the status of children lies with the adoptive parents, even if they see themselves as dependent on the agencies. (This is  in principle no different in German adoptions). To the question of how adoptive parents can know which agencies behave correctly,  a representative of the USCIS replied: "You are spending $30,000 on to adoption, you want to do a lot of due diligence on the organization that you are hiring to work for you. Many people research a car more closely than they research on agency."

First published in German on April 17th, 2011. 

Why are there unethical adoptions in Ethiopia?

According to UNICEF there are 5 million orphaned children in Ethiopia. Taking into account that this number includes half-orphans, who could live with a parent and relatives, there is still a high number of children that in need of a home.  Why is there still a high number of complaints and reports of unethical practices in Ethiopian adoption procedures? Why are there reports of fake social reports, false statements about age and origin, uninformed parents who are tricked into giving up  their children? According to a survey of the American parent organization PEAR, almost 30% of surveyed parents have experienced unethical practices which were not excusable.

One explanation for this is the desire for small children. Many adoptive parents are looking for a young child  (even though the trauma of an abandoned infant of a separation of parents and family is no less serious than of older children). Young children are rarely orphaned and initially rather cared for within the family. To enable their placements quickly and unbureaucratically, the appropriate procedures are not complied with.

Also, a lack of resources is likely to play a role. Research on the families of the children and the circumstances of their abandonement is expensive. Travelling to Southern Ethiopian South is tiring and the communication is difficult. There is also a competition between agencies. As American agencies have rushed into the country, they must reach a certain number of placements to operate their offices on the ground.

However, the most important and most difficult reason is a lack of legal and ehtical awareness among those involved. Time and again we hear the objection that you may not apply Western standards in Ethiopia. That it is more important to bring a child into a family than to ask too many questions. That an illiterate Ethiopian can not understand the legal consequences of a German adoption. That for the children, their age in the Passport is not important as long as they can only leave the country. These arguments are wrong. They rob children their right to the knowledge of their origin and identity. Those who deal with international adoptions, have to ensure the same standards in the truthfulness of documentation of placements as in domestic adoption. 


First published in German on March 28, 2011.