All the Social Orphans Suffolk University Law Professor Sara Dillon on International Children's Rights and Social Orphan Policy
Center for Adoption Policy Center for Adoption Policy provides research, analysis, advice and education to practitioners and the public about current legislation and practices governing ethical domestic and intercountry adoption in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute Educates federal policy makers about the need for adoption reform, and coordinates efforts of policy makers and public groups to improve the lives of children.
Harvard Law School Child Advocacy Program The Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School is committed to advancing children's interests through facilitating productive interaction between academia and the world of policy and practice, and through training generations of students to contribute in their future careers to law reform and social change.
Last week I wrote a post for Mama Manifesto titled The Bitter Truth About Chocolate. I recently learned that the majority of the world's cocoa beans come from the West African countries of Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Harvesting the beans that eventually become the chocolate in your Hershey's Kiss is a labor-intensive process, and the bulk of the work is done by children, some as young as five years old. Some kids from cocoa-farming families in the region forgo school to help their parents in the fields. Tens of thousands more are child trafficking victims who are essentially treated as slave laborers.
It's a child welfare crisis that ten years of international attention has not solved.
Several American adoption agencies have opened pilot programs in Ghana, and I can't help but wonder: what does Ghana's opening to international adoption tell us about the country's child welfare picture? What impact is international adoption going to have here? Is the program a "good" choice for prospective adoptive parents?
First, a few fast facts about Ghana:
Population -- 21 million
Estimated number of people of all ages living with HIV -- 290,000
Estimated number of orphans -- 1,100,000
Estimated number of children in orphanages -- 4,500
Total number of children not attending school, according to a 2007 study -- approximately 1.4 million
Clearly, many of Ghana's orphans are being cared for by extended family, but according to the slideshow below, produced by the Ghana Health Service, orphans living in institutions are actually more likely to get an education than those living with relatives.
Another Ghanian government study admits that the country has a significant human trafficking problem, with 70 percent of the trafficking being internal and 78 percent of the victims being children between the ages of 4 and 16. Apparently child slavery isn't limited to Ghana's cocoa farms; according to the 2009 U.S. State Deparment Trafficking in Persons Report:
Ghana is a source, transit, and destination country for children and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking within the country is more prevalent than transnational trafficking and the majority of victims are children. Both boys and girls are trafficked within Ghana for forced labor in agriculture and the fishing industry, for street hawking, forced begging by religious instructors, as porters, and possibly for forced kente weaving. Over 30,000 children are believed to be working as porters, or Kayaye, in Accra alone. Annually, the... [International Organization for Migration] reports numerous deaths of boys trafficked for hazardous forced labor in the Lake Volta fishing industry. Girls are trafficked within the country for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation. To a lesser extent, boys are also trafficked internally for sexual exploitation, primarily for sex tourism.
Clearly, there is a population of children in Ghana who would benefit from international adoption, but given the rampant child trafficking that is already occurring here, trafficking for adoption -- or at the very least, the public perception of trafficking for adoption -- seems a distinct possibility. In fact, the adoptive mother of a child from Ghana, writing on the website Informed Adoption Advocates, warns prospective adoptive parents that Ghanian officials are likely equate international adoption with trafficking and will need to be won over with the help of "your adoption agency."
So which agencies have opted to brave Ghana's challenging environment? The Joint Council on International Children's Services lists seven member agencies working in Ghana, but my research shows that only four of these programs are currently open:
Adoption Advocates International (AAI) -- Hague accredited agency with a long track record in Africa and a reputation for advocating for older child adoption
Children’s House International -- Hague accredited agency in business since 1975
Hopscotch Adoptions -- Hague accredited agency (with a trail of client complaints on the internet)
Partners for Adoption -- Hague accredited agency founded in 1983
It's worth noting that Ghana has not signed the Hague Convention; overall, from a prospective parent perspective, pursuing adoption here requires what adoption agencies like to call "a pioneering attitude."
None of the agencies working in Ghana is a major industry player on the level of a Holt or Children's Home Society; these mega-agencies have the resources to initiate large humanitarian projects in the countries in which they work; AAI reportedly has charitable plans in Ghana, but nothing operational yet. Adoptive parents are sometimes inspired to initiate D.I.Y. foreign aid projects, or contribute to NGOs working in the country of their child's birth, but with just 100 US "adoption" visas issued to Ghanian children in 2009, the macro benefits of the program are still small. Ghana's current government has promised to aggressively tackle the child trafficking issue. If the initiative succeeds even in a small way, it will make intercountry adoption a more attractive and viable option for many Ghanian children.
