International Adoption: Unicef’s and Other Critics? War Against International Adoption

UNICEF has been waging war against international adoption for many years contrary to popular understanding.  It’s a war with results that fall far short of real time solutions to the spoils of its victories.  UNICEF’s premise that parents in underdeveloped countries should be provided the means to keep their children is not arguable.  Neither is UNICEF’s stance that international adoption should only be a last resort.

However, UNICEF’s tough and effective pressure tactics and  lobbying efforts towards developing nations calling for ratification of the Hague Treaty for the Protection of Children and implementation of adoption law and policy models which effectively serve to close programs completely or almost completely to foreign adopters belies a misguided, unrealistic and out of touch policy contrary to the best interests of hundreds of thousands of legitimately orphaned and abandoned children around the world. These efforts have resulted in the semi or complete closure of adoptions around the world in such countries as Guatemala, Bulgaria, Paraguay, and Romania to mention just a few examples.
 
Let’s take the example of Guatemala.  After intense pressure from UNICEF, Guatemala finally closed its doors to international adoption on December 31, 2008.  Prior to that time, foreign nationals adopted approximately 5,000 Guatemalan children per year.   Oscar Avila, “Guatemala Seeks Domestic Fix to Troubled Overseas Adoptions,” Chicago Tribune, October 26, 2008 indicated that “Guatemala has launched an ambitious campaign to recruit foster parents and even adoptive parents at home.”  So far, the program is failing miserably.  Avila reports, “Only about 45 families in a nation of 13 million currently have taken in foster children since the program began this year.”

The approach that Guatemala is taking by attempting to gain domestic attention to the problem is certainly meritorius; however, this approach could and should have been implemented concomitant with an international program which would ensure that thousands of children will find homes rather than waste away in institutions that are often underfunded, understaffed and unable to provide for the needs of these children.

One of the main criticisms of the Guatemalan adoption program prior to its closure was that it was in the hands of private attorneys who depended on sometimes unscrupulous middlemen to procure birthmothers wanting to give up their children and perhaps those not wanting to give up their children.  Of course this depiction glosses over the nature of how this practice developed in remote villages in Guatemala, far from the lawyers in Guatemala City who could arrange adoptions by foreign nationals.  It was a practical way to connect birthmothers, who were seeking adoption as an option to their usually dire circumstances, to attorneys who could then take the children into custody through the use of foster homes and then place the children with families abroad through adoption proceedings.  It is interesting to note that neither UNICEF nor the Guatemalan government could see that there could be a middle ground to solving the problem of unscrupulous middlemen who were supposedly forcing these women to give up their children, paying the women as an inducement, or even, as many reports claimed, kidnapping these children for adoption.  Many of these reports glossed over the fact that birth mothers had to relinquish their child to an attorney advising her of her rights, undergo an interview with the Family Court, DNA testing of the birth mother and child, review by the Guatemalan Solicitor General’s office, and once again, the birth mother’s consent to the adoption after the Solicitor General’s approval.  The Embassies regularly interviewed birth mothers and conducted investigations at random or of cases that appeared questionable.   During the last year of adoptions in Guatemala, a 2nd DNA test was required at the end of the process based on accusations of child switching with unimpressive findings to back up these wanton allegations. 

Avila’s report indicates that the Guatemalan Department of Social Welfare has now created satellite offices all over the country in an attempt to increase its pool of families interested in fostering or adopting these children.  Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of reform that many adoption attorneys called for which would remove involvement by middlemen but allow attorneys to work with the Department of Social Welfare in concert with its ongoing program to promote foster care and adoption domestically.  UNICEF would not come to the table nor would the Guatemalan government which was eager to completely shut the door on international adoption in response to UNICEF’s strong and effective lobbying efforts.

Another example of misguided criticism regarding international adoption is in Malawi, where the infamous Madonna adoption took place.  Malawi is a country of 13 million and approximately 1 million are orphans half of which are “AIDS orphans”. Solutions are slow in coming in a nation beset by an AIDS epidemic infecting almost one fouth of its population.   These orphaned children deserve a chance at having permanent homes and families.  International adoption is not a perfect solution to the problem in Malawi and so many other nations of Africa but it saves lives, gives children a chance, one adoption at a time.

Of course, most would agree that international adoption should not be the sole answer to poverty faced by nations around the world.  No rational person would think so.  International adoption should be seen as a stopgap emergency measure taken while the United Nations, human rights groups, humanitarian organizations and the governments of these underdeveloped countries seek answers to the abject poverty, high birth rates, AIDS epidemic, malnutrition, lack of education, lack of women’s rights, and massive unemployment which lead to parents making these hard decisions about the future of their offspring.  International adoption is one temporary cog in the wheel.  UNICEF and other detractors and critics of international adoption have continually failed to recognize the vital emergency role of international adoption and how compromise and middle ground solutions could serve the orphaned and abandoned children.

Candace O’Brien, Esquire has over 10 years of experience in the field of international adopation and is the Director of AdoptInternational, a licensed adoption agency. For further information: http://www.adoptintl.com

http://www.adoptamerica411.com

hopelessness and hope
hand in hand international adoption

Image by drwhimsy
August 26, 2007

I thought of calling this “Grief and Hope”, but, although I perceive my current experience to be of grieving, hopelessness feels more apt. One year ago tomorrow, I stopped at an orphanage in Kathmandu to say goodbye to Puja (above left) on my way to the airport.

I had met her a week earlier and it took three days before I first saw her smile. The day after this first smile – and after much electronic consultation with my wife, who was half way around the world – Puja and I sat together, playing with my passport in a governmental office where I signed the papers committing my family to adopt her. I expected we would return for her in about six months.

Last November, my wife, Megan, traveled to Nepal to meet Puja, and they had ten largely joyous days together.

In late February, we learned that our adoption file had been approved and we scheduled our trip back to Nepal. This time we bought four round-trip tickets and a fifth one-way for the return trip (Our then five-year old son and a good friend, Susan, were to accompany us to Kathmandu). Due to a lost passport, Megan and our son ended up traveling four days later than we had anticipated, but Susan and I arrived in Kathmandu as scheduled in mid-March.

Puja is a willful, spirited, and intense child, with some hard-earned attachment issues. In March, she was two-and-a-half (estimated). By the time the rest of my family arrived, Puja was quite bonded to me and, after several more days, she was allowed to live with us at our apartment in Kathmandu, while the paperwork awaited its bureaucratic completion.

The above-photograph was taken at 9 a.m., on March 20 of this year. It was one of the few photos in which Puja was unambiguously smiling. It was out of focus (and I have also added some radial blur in photoshop). This was also the last picture I will ever take of Puja. About two hours after doing so, our good friend Roshan, who works at Puja’s orphanage, unexpectedly appeared and advised us that he had been told by his boss to pick up Puja, although he did not know why.

When Roshan came, I had snuck out on the balcony to get a reprieve from Puja who insisted on my holding her whenever I was around (and I was playing with Photoshop). For that reason, it was Megan who handed Puja to Roshan, (though I had come in when I saw Roshan coming) and I gave her a quick kiss. My wife and I, though dazed, did not want to worsen the moment with a difficult or emotional parting. We also did not foresee the finality of this goodbye. Our son was as confused by these events as were we.

It was nearly a week (during which: there was much intrigue; many lies; daily and dramatic shifts in what we believed had occurred, and what could happen next; a new government formed in Nepal; a three day strike that shut the city down; and other dramatic events that now seem insignificant) before we learned that Puja’s mother — whom we had never heard of, having been told that Puja was found abandoned on a street, and shown police reports to that effect — had come to the orphanage and claimed her. We also concluded that, no matter what happened next, under Nepali and U.S. law, we would not be able to complete the adoption.

For reasons relating to the new government (“new” in that the Maoists, who had been in violent opposition to the Monarchy for more than a decade had formally joined the other seven political parties after the King was stripped of his powers; in this new government, the Ministry for Women and Children, which oversees adoptions, was placed in the control of a member from the Maoist party), no international adoptions have been processed since March. New laws are being put in place. We have friends who are still in Nepal — living in limbo — with their would-be adoptive children.

Susan left Nepal as planned after two weeks. About three weeks later, our son and I left (and we celebrated his sixth birthday in Bangkok during Songkran). Megan remained for another month and she began our process of adopting anew. Akritti, pictured on the right, is (hopefully) going to be our daughter. She will be a year old next month. I have never met her and find I have very little feeling for her, although I feel confident my heart will grow to embrace her, when I am ready.

Our son, who doesn’t know about Akritti specifically, (though he immediately asked, as soon as we told him about Puja’s mother coming for her, if we would adopt a different child from Nepal) recently mentioned “when we go back to Nepal” and met our suggestion that probably only Megan or I would travel to complete an adoption, with protested: “We all have to go. It wouldn’t be fair to our sister!” This was an especially powerful message because our son’s first, and unexpectedly prolonged, experience in Nepal was not much fun for him.

While I am disposed to begin a summation of this odyssey with an acknowledgment if how profoundly proud I am of how my family has dealt with this fluid and tumultuous experience (and I am incredibly proud of us), to do so would be to repeat a dysfunctional and familiar behavior arising from my own upbringing; one of several, which I am struggling to overcome. Rather than putting a positive spin on this horrific experience, hear me proclaim: “I am mad as hell!” and “I am deeply wounded!”

Whenever I tried to set Puja down or hand her off to another, Puja clung to me, grabbing for me and exclaiming: “Mama, garne!” (“I want Mama”). In her confused world, I was Mama. Now — we assume — she is with her biological mother, who has three older children and is destitute and desperate (Imagine having given up you child because you could not afford to raise her!). There is such dire poverty in Nepal.

I have lost Mom and Dad (who was an orphan) and a brother to death. In total, I spent less than two weeks with Puja; yet this loss feels profound and different. Puja will remain a part of me throughout my life and I will always wonder what has become of her with the bittersweet hope that she carries no memory of me. This is all so damned unfair! I don’t even know Puja’s name.

And so, I share: an out of focus photograph — though Puja’s memory has hardly faded; another photograph that portends of hope and happiness; a conviction I have no doubt I will come to own that, one day I will feel, of course, Aakriti (or perhaps still different child), was meant to be “our sister.” Understand, if you can, that while I might like to be soothed, first, and foremost, I need my anger and pain — which have so seldom found a clear voice in me — to be heard. Resolutely. And without apology. As I lament my inability to help Puja battle her demons, I struggle with my own.

Thank you for wading through this act of public grieving and for whatever kind thoughts doing so may have evoked. As I take this week of solitude (my wife and son are on the east coast until Labor Day) to grieve and explore my difficult feelings, I struggle to stay in my heart and not my head. But I think I will allow my rationale mind to override this recurring powerful urge to go out and get myself a puppy.

Namaste.


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