Whatever Things Are True: the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the World of International Adoption

Two Years After the Earthquake, the State of Haiti's Children: Not Everyone Agrees

 

Last week marked the two year anniversary of the tragic earthquake in Haiti. You probably caught some of the "What is the state of Haiti today?" stories, but here's a few more articles and posts that focus on the siutation for children in that struggling country.

Photographer Ron Haviv created a photo essay of current conditions for CNN.com:

 

He notes:

"What hits me the hardest whenever I’m in Haiti is how the majority of people are struggling against great odds to better their life and the lives of their children."

Haviv, a co-founder of the renowned VII photo agency, began covering the turmoil in Haiti in 1990. His trip in December focused on the country’s vulnerable children, who often end up targeted by human trafficking networks.

Haiti had about 350,000 orphans before the earthquake and as many as 1 million afterward, according to government estimates. Many had parents who gave them up because they were unable to care for them.

 

Meanwhile, UNICEF is claiming "victories" for Haitain children:

UNICEF Representative in Haiti Francoise Gruloos-Ackermans has no doubt that the situation facing children is slowly improving.

 "There is evidence of little victories everywhere, although serious gaps and inadequacies in Haiti’s basic governance structures remain," she said.

And with continued efforts, these victories offer the promise of lasting, meaningful progress – even surpassing pre-earthquake conditions.

 

The World Bank is also promoting a positive spin, claiming that close to half a million children have received post-earthquake tuition wavers through its programs -- but when you read the fine print, the number is actually 210,000, which is under a quarter million. The World Bank  also cites having provided 75,000 meals to children in the past two years and rebuilt an unnamed number of schools, and celebrates that nearly half of the earthquake debris has been cleared. (But doesn't that also mean that more than half of the wreckage remains after two years?!)

Meanwhile, German news network DW-WORLD.DE asks:

It's been two years since Haiti was devastated by a massive earthquake in which over 200,000 people were killed. Germans donated some 230 million euros in the wake of the disaster - what has become of this money?

On the adoption front, NBC News Correspondent Ron Allen produced a follow up video report on two little girls, Naika and Tia, who were among the more than 1,000 children airlifted to the US soon after the quake to have their adoptions completed here. (They're doing great, as one would hope.)

Over at Rage Against the Minivan, blogger Kristen Howerton posted Haitian Orphans: Two Years Later, Still UNICEF'd, a response to a piece from CBS News that you can view on her site.

Kristen was in Haiti when the earthquake hit, and she's the mother of a Haitian child who came home as part of the emergency airlift. She writes:

I am so disheartened that children in Haiti continue to suffer, and even more disheartened that children continue to suffer based on well-intended policies taken too far at the expense of those they intend to protect. If UNICEF is going to police adoption, then they should also police the conditions that children are living in. They should be working on reunification, and if that doesn't work, on a swift permanency plan. They should be locating the papers needed to move kids into permanent families, instead of setting up kids to be lifetime orphans. And if their policies are clearly leading to child neglect, they should be ashamed.

Two years later. Not good enough.

 

Adoptive Parents vs. UNICEF: the Latest Round

 

Earlier this week, Washington Times columnist Andrea Poe fired another round at UNICEF at The Red Thread blog. In "Why I Won't Buy UNICEF Holiday cards," she says:

UNICEF has been very successful in marketing its cards to unsuspecting Americans, who do not know about its stance against the world’s orphans finding permanent families in the U.S.  In fact, UNICEF rakes in about $16.8 million from sales of cards and related products, according to a United Nations report for 2010. 

In recent years, UNICEF has taken a radical position against orphans, insisting that life in the country of birth is always preferable than life with an adoptive family in another country even when that means children are condemned to orphanages.  So much for those handholding holiday cards.  Good-bye, one-ness.  Hello, border patrol.

 

Reader comments on the post are predictably divided, with many pointing out that UNICEF's policy papers support international adoption as a viable option for some children. Other readers insist we need look at UNICEF's actions, not its words.

One commenter in particular grabbed my attention. "An Adoptive Parent" wrote:

Most people don't realize that International adoptions to the US are down 60% over the last 6 years from about 23,000 children to 9,000.  However there are more and more children orphaned every year.  By Unicef's own estimate of the number of orphans grew from 132 Million in 2005 to 153 Million in 2009. 

I did a quick fact check (or, what counts a "quick" check, given how hard it is to navigate UNICEF's site) and I verified the 2009 statistic offered by the commenter here. I couldn't locate the 2005 statistic for comparison, even though I spent more than 30 minutes scanning UNICEF's 2005 report on the state of the world's children, which I downloaded as a PDF from this page. Yet I was struck by the 2005 report's warning of an explosive orphan crisis due to AIDS -- and found NO mention of domestic or international adoption as a solution for any children.

 

 

Carnegie Council for Ethics Looks at International Adoption

 

The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs has just released a thoughtful essay on international adoption policy by Alison M. S. Watson, Head of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. The piece,titled, Love and Legislation: The International Politics of Inter-country Adoption, focuses on the ethical limitations of the Hague Convention and UN Convention on the Rights of the Child where adoption is concerned, as well as the negative and incoherent attitude many international stakeholders display toward ithe issue. Professor Watson writes:

The debate surrounding inter-country adoption is not made any clearer by the somewhat negative tone that some of the most powerful intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (NGO's) that advocate for children assume in their views.

For example, UNICEF states that it supports inter-country adoption, when it is carried out in line with the standards and principles of the Hague Convention, but that it is a practice that can also pose significant problems and risks if children are unnecessarily denied the opportunity to live with their parents or relatives and/or are exposed to trauma and long-term emotional problems. UNICEF also states that the financial aspects of international adoption can encourage malpractice and accelerate the proliferation of poor quality orphanages, as well as diverting resources from the development of good quality alternative care for children in their own communities.

There is no doubt that there is truth in such statements—adoption does have a life-long impact on any child, and there are indeed financial incentives that can encourage malpractice. But many would argue that the amount of lip-service paid to these issues is out of proportion with the extent of these malpractices themselves. This is not to say that cases of corruption and child laundering do not take place—they absolutely do; however seeing inter-country adoption as somehow commensurate with such malpractice is to take a distorted view. Moreover, such sentiments take much away from the majority of bona fide adoptive parents who often spend significant time ensuring that their adoptions are ethical, and on trying to minimize the long-term ill effects on their child.

Read the entire piece if you can. It's well worth it.

 

 

The Nation Looks (Askance) at "The Evangelical Adoption Crusade"

The Nation has just released an article by Kathryn Joyce, "The Evanglical Adoption Crusade," that looks at the Christian adoption movement that has been building steadily for the past three to four years:

 

Adoption has long been the province of religious and secular agencies, but in the past two years evangelical advocacy has skyrocketed. In 2009 Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of the 2009 book Adopted for Life, shepherded through a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) resolution calling on all 16 million members of the denomination to become involved in adoption or “orphan care.” Last year at least five evangelical adoption conferences were held, and between 1,000 and 2,000 churches participated in an “Orphan Sunday” event in November. And in February, the mammoth evangelical adoption agency Bethany Christian Services announced that its adoption placements had increased 13 percent since 2009, in large part because of the mobilization of churches.

 

As with previous coverage of international adoption in The Nation, the piece skews subtly negative, pointing out genuine causes for concern around the evengelical movement, yet at the same time minimizing the scope of the global orphan crisis and the genuine need for response. Writes Joyce:

 

the central problem [is ] in how most evangelical adoption ministries define the scope of the worldwide “orphan crisis.” As with the misleading estimates of Haitian orphans, the global numbers most frequently mentioned—ranging from 132 million to 210 million—paint an inaccurate picture, willfully misconstruing UNICEF tallies of developing nations’ vulnerable children, a category that includes children who have lost only one parent or who live with extended family.

Susan Bissell, UNICEF’s chief of child protection, says no good estimate exists of the number of orphans worldwide, but a 2004 UNICEF report calculated that there were at least 16 million children worldwide who had lost both parents.

 

It seems unfair to accuse the evengelicals of intentionally misusing statistics when the real problem is that reliable statistics don't exist. Both the pro- and anti-adoption factions are working with the same "numbers," interpreted differently. While the media needs to address the serious issues and concerns in the international adoption world, wouldn't it also be great to see a magazine do an investigative piece uncovering the reasons why the international community can't come up with reliable child welfare statistics?  

The article also paints a picture of the evangelical community primarily driven to acquire children for Western conversion, giving short shrift to the many Christian orphan care initiatives working toward in-country solutions and family preservation.

Finally, Joyce predicts that with fewer stable adoption programs currently operating and the increased "demand" for children to adopt coming from the evangelical community, future crises in the adoption world are a given.

How do you feel about the Christian "adoption movement," and what  do you think of The Nation's reporting?

 

One of the Guatemala 900 Tells a Heartbreaking Story of Adoption Deferred

Yesterday, Andrea Poe of the Washington Times'  Adoptive Family Forum allowed a waiting adoptive father from the Guatemala 900 group to tell his story in her column. Poe's previous  editorial criticizing UNICEF's hidden opposition to international adoption spurred a deluge of criticism in the blogosphere from anti-adoption factions. We can expect the same folks to pick apart Anthony and Megan Gatto, who describe how they've been struggling since 2006 to finalize the adoption of their intended Guatemalan son, Anderson:

We travelled to Guatemala on March 4, 2007...to visit Anderson for the first time.  We immediately bonded with him and felt like parents... The adoption was submitted to family court in Guatemala where it was determined in June 2007 that the mother relinquished the baby and that he was adoptable.  During the week of June 16-23, 2007 we again visited Anderson for a week. 

Anthony Gatto's first day with Anderson/Photo: Anthony Gatto

While we were in Guatemala, our attorney advised us of the “state of affairs” concerning adoptions in Guatemala.  We were notified that at any time, the Guatemalan political system could vote on complying with the Hague Treaty as it relates to international adoptions. 

In October 2007 Guatemala voted in favor of complying with The Hague Treaty but included no provision "grandfathering" all pending adoptions. 

We appeared on the local news to bring attention to the issue.  Despite the potential issues present in Guatemala, we again travelled to visit Anderson for the third time, December 7-15, 2007.

Due to the assistance of numerous members of the U.S. Congress, in February 2008, the Guatemalan government “officially” agreed to allow in-process adoptions to be exempt from the new laws.  It should be noted that there was a significant amount of political turmoil in Guatemala at this time and as a result, the Guatemalan government during this four-month period was processing no adoptions.

Due to the uncertainty of the political climate, our file was not submitted for processing until March 10, 2008.  During the last week in April 2008, President Colom dismissed the Attorney General of Guatemala.  This also caused more delays since the Attorney General’s office processed adoptions.

On June 24, 2008, we were notified that Anderson’s “aunt” filed a petition in court to adopt him.  Anderson’s mother told our attorney that she did not want Anderson to go with her sister.  On July 1, 2008, we were asked by our Guatemalan attorney to write a letter to Anderson’s mother telling her how much Anderson means to us and provide photographs from our visits.  We complied and were informed these were to be used at a hearing on July 17, 2008.  Our attorney appealed the issue and it was brought before the Court of Appeals.  After numerous postponements, a hearing date was set for March 17, 2009. 

After eight months, our attorney asked if we still interested in adopting Anderson.  We said yes.  She informed us that the judge had not made his decision but the mother testified at the hearing that she wanted us to adopt Anderson, not her sister. 

The birthmother went so far as to attend a formal deposition with the District Attorney, Attorney General and went on record stating she wants us to adopt her child, not her sister or other relatives.

On March 28, 2009, we were notified that the judge ruled in our favor and the adoption could continue.  Despite the order form the Court of Appeals, the Guatemalan government refused to release our file for processing. 

On May 30, 2009, we visited Anderson in Guatemala for the fourth time for 10 days. 

We have been prohibited from visiting him since that time since the Guatemalan government raided the orphanage and took all the children in July 2009 into “protective custody.”  The last we have seen or heard about Anderson was from a Guatemalan television station that showed footage of him being placed in a bus surrounded by Guatemalan Police holding machine guns. 

This story left me feeling weak, for it echoes what I experienced in India in 2003, where dozens of children who were taken by force into "protective custody" have never been accounted for, and court orders to release children were unaccountably ignored by government officials.

Adoption critics will argue that Anderson should remain in Guatemala. They'll claim that his mother is being coerced into placing him with an American family, and that at the very least, he should be placed with his aunt. But what if Anderson's first mother genuinely wants the Gattos to raise her child? Don't her wishes matter? At the very least, can  all the parties to the adoption debate agree that is unconscionable and repugnant for a government to take children by force and make them disappear?

My heart goes out to Anthony and Megan Gatto for having the courage to tell their story.

 

UNICEF's Real Position on Inter-country Adoption

I recently got drawn into a passionate debate on a friend's Facebook page about whether or not UNICEF harbors a real but hidden agenda of opposition to inter-country adoption. I personally believe that the only reason that UNICEF doesn't openly and officially oppose inter-country adoption is the fear of political push back from the US and other Western nations whose citizens adopt thousands of children from the developing world each year.

What do you think about this blog post from Andrea Poe at The Washington Times? Poe writes:

 

What’s so disappointing about UNICEF’s position is that for years the organization has been a leader in child welfare around the world.  The work that they do to help feed and immunize children is unimpeachable.  And perhaps this is the problem.  The organization’s success in this area has jaundiced UNICEF’s view on adoption.

Arbitrary national borders on a map have become a greater priority to UNICEF than the complicated issues of placing children with safe, loving families wherever those families may be. 

UNICEF has repeatedly stated that it prefers the expansion of social welfare programs for poor families within countries, so that children can stay in kinship groups.  The practical outcome has been that unparented children are being denied the best homes so that UNICEF can score cheap points in the international arena about the insufficient aid poor countries receive.  The pawns here are the children.

Harvard Law School’s Elizabeth Bartholet, an adoptive parent herself and a well-regarded child advocate, has publicly stated that “international adoption is under siege,” largely because of UNICEF’s unrelenting assault on inter-country adoption. 

In Batholet’s paper International Adoption: The Human Rights Position she writes, “Preferences for what UNICEF calls permanent family or foster care [in country] are dangerous. UNICEF’s argument is that such care could preserve children’s birth and national heritage links. But foster care doesn’t exist as a meaningful option in most sending countries – unparented children are instead relegated to orphanages. UNICEF wants foster care expanded, but denying children adoptive homes now because in the future foster care might exist is unfair to existing children.”

The influence of UNICEF on the world community cannot be overstated.  It has used its reputation as a leader in children welfare to lobby countries, including the United States, to reduce the number of inter-country adoptions.  The results have had dire consequences for children around the world. 

 

UNICEF's effective attack on inter-country adoption | Washington Times Communities.

Adoptive Parents Take on Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF

I've been meaning to write about the Guatemala 900 political campaign for months. (Information about Guatemala has been missing from this blog for too long!) According to Guatadopt, the most comprehensive source of information about international adoption from Guatemala on the web:

On January 1, 2008 adoptions in Guatemala abruptly changed from a privately run system to government run entity. The 5000 adoptions that were “in process” at the time were “grandfathered” to finish under the laws in which they began. Although the Guatemalan government promised to expeditiously process all of these grandfathered, pre-Hague adoption cases in a timely and reasonable manner, now almost...[three years] later approximately 900 children are still waiting to join their families.

The Guatemala 900 campaign...[was]  launched as a voice for these 900 children and asks the governments of the United States and Guatemala to work together to ensure speedy due process for the remaining grandfathered cases.

The refusal of the Guatemala 900 families to give up on the children they'd planned to adopt garnered a 2010 Angels in Adoption Award for Ann and David Roth, a couple active in the organization.

The Guatemala 900's latest action takes aim at UNICEF, believed by many international adoption stakeholders to be actively anti-adoption, despite position statements to the contrary. From the Guatemala 900 press release:

 

DO NOT contribute to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF supported by Toys”R”Us this year!

At this point in time, the Guatemala 900 and its vast community of supporters cannot endorse UNICEF’s Halloween drive due to the following:

• While UNICEF is known to be the largest advocate and provider of child welfare worldwide, in reality, its policies and influence in Guatemala and other developing countries have left hundreds of thousands of children without the love and stability of a permanent family.
• UNICEF currently provides financial and technical support to organizations in Guatemala that are actively terminating legal, legitimate adoptions leaving children to languish for years in institutions while loving adoptive families await them.
• UNICEF endorses legislation worldwide that severely restricts a woman’s right to choose an adoption plan for her child as well as her right to privacy.
• UNICEF offers no reasonable interim plan for children who are currently living outside parental permanency and little support for countries like Guatemala to care for the children who would otherwise live secure lives with a loving family.

We need you to do 3 things in the next week leading up to Halloween!

Your actions can help change the futures of thousands of orphaned and abandoned children in Guatemala and millions worldwide, and it won’t cost you a dime (well…maybe a stamp)!

1. Notify your social networks, schools and churches immediately. DO NOT accept the status quo and DO NOT donate to UNICEF this Halloween. Give candy instead, kids like it better anyway!  Use the attached flyer to help educate your friends, family, and social networks on how UNICEF’s policies deny children around the world the right to a permanent and loving family.
2. Email Gerald L. Storch, Chairman and CEO, Toys”R”Us, Inc., letting him know you DO NOT accept the status quo.  See attached letter for reference.  Feel free to personalize.  Please also mail a hard copy.
3. If you are a waiting Guatemala 900 Family notify your MOCs and press contacts about this campaign and ask them for their support!

 

Someday I will write the complete story of my own failed adoption of a little girl from India. There, too, UNICEF played a role in sparking and exacerbating the crisis. During the 18 months I spent in Hyderabad trying to pull the adoption through, I met extensively with UNICEF workers. They were good people --  who exhibited  a range of opionions about inter-country adoption. I came away from the experience with respect for these individuals, but also with the conviction that UNICEF as an organization is indeed anti-adoption at its core. UNICEF's size and diffusiveness also make it a highly inefficient dispenser of aid. I stopped giving to UNICEF a long time ago.

 

 

The Abuse of Power and the Dangers of Institutionalization

 

For weeks, I've been stewing about a disturbing story about  child sexual abuse from Portugal. The New York Times reported that on September 3:

Six people were convicted of child sexual abuse in a Lisbon court ... in a trial that lasted nearly six years...

A three-judge panel found the defendants guilty of raping and sexually abusing minors at a state-run institution for needy children, and of running a ring for pedophiles. A seventh defendant, charged with allowing her home to be used for sexual abuse, was acquitted.

The charges involved the rape and sexual abuse of 32 children who were residents of the home in Lisbon, part of a network of institutions for children called Casa Pia. The crimes took place in the 1990s, but they first came to light in 2002.

The details are lurid. An orphanage caretaker helped smuggle children out of Casa Pia in the dead of night. The children were then shuttled to private homes for abuse by Portuguese politicians, diplomats and TV stars. This disgusting arrangement was apparently an open secret among the country's elite for years, and it seems likely that some guilty parties remain unpunished. UK media outlets have speculated about links between the prominent pedophile ring and the disappearance of 4 year old Madeliene McCann , who was abducted from a Portugese hotel room in 2007 while her parents were on holiday.

Where to begin? First of all, while this case is particularly shocking because it involves a conspiracy among Portugal's ruling class, the scenario is hardly unique. A quick Google search of "child sexual abuse orphanages" yields an avalanche of depressing results.I have personally heard similar disgusting stories about systemic sexual abuse in public and private orphanages in elsewhere in the world. Children lacking parental care are at elevated risk of every sort of abuse imaginable, period.

As I've thought about the Casa Pia story, E.J. Graff's recent report on th collapse of the US intercountry adoption agreement with Vietnam has been flickering at the back of my mind. According to Graff's review of State Department documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, US officials uncovered evidence of a conspiratorial network of Vietnamese government officials, police, social workers and orphanage personnel engaged in trafficking children for adoption abroad. Both in Portugal and Vietnam, we have evidence of collusion among a group of societal elites to exploit children. International adoption critics point to Graff's work as evidence of the corrosive impact international adoption tends to have on a society...yet Portugal has no such program. What's really at the root of all the evil done to children?

 

A few points to consider about Portugal:

• the country has not quite 10 million citizens
• UNICEF estimates that 82,000 Portugese children were orphaned in 2007 alone
• SOS Children's Villages, an NGO that provides long-term care of children who can no longer grow up with their biological families, operates three Children's Villages and four SOS Youth Facilities in the country; many more government and private orphanages exist all over the country, though statistics are hard to come by
• Portugal has no practical legal framework to permit international adoption
• domestic adoption statistics are not easy for this non-Portuguese speaker to locate

Exactly how many children live in Portugese orphanages today? There's no way to know. Once again, we see how the lack of international transparency and accountability around issues of child welfare leaves children tragically, criminally vulnerable.

New International Adoption Rules Won't Solve Russia's Problems

Everywhere you turn, there's speculation and concern about Russia's new international adoption regulations. It's not that there's anything wrong with the rules themselves, but rather that so many serious, related child welfare issues remain unaddressed. This Moscow News article, "Adoption Changes Risk Ignoring Plight of Orphans in Russia" by Tom Washington, lays it out pretty succinctly:

Russia is experiencing an enormous child welfare crisis --

There are now 700,000 orphans [in the country], 30 per cent of them living in state homes, according to figures from the parliamentary committee on family and children – more than at the end of World War II. Pro rata it’s four to five times higher than in the west.

Committee bosses describe it as a “humanitarian catastrophe”, and it’s one which childcare workers fear is being hidden by the lurid headlines.

Post-adoption follow up is not enough --

The scrunity (sic) won’t stop when the child leaves Russia. “It’s important that we can monitor the situation in the family until the child reaches 18,” Director of Education Alina Levitskaya told Kommersant...

But reports on the children’s progress are meaningless, says psychologist Galina Semya. The earlier reports on the children in Russia are less rigorous and so there is nothing to compare the American checks with. 

That last point -- the earlier reports on the children in Russia are less rigorous and so there is nothing to compare the American checks with -- really jumped out at me. Providing comprehensive child evaluations to prospective adoptive parents seems critical to promoting successful child placements, but Russian officials don't appear to be considering this.

A new UNICEF report, Blame and Banishment: The Underground HIV Epidemic Affecting Children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, further underscores the child welfare crisis in Russia and its neighboring countries. As law professor Sara Dillon points out on her blog:

this region has "the highest rate of family separation in the world," --  with 1.3 with 1.3 million children living out of family care. Rates of institutionalization are not decreasing–rather, abandonment is increasing. 

I fully understand Russia's anguished outrage over the Artyem Savelyev case, but looking at these grim statistics, I can't help but feel that the case has also become the  outlet for ALL of Russia's anguish and frustration in the child welfare arena. Demanding post-adoption changes from the US is no doubt easier and cheaper than finding the strategies, the will and the money to attack overwhelming, tragic problems at home.

One-third of world's child brides in India: UNICEF - India - The Times of India

Yet another article describing the appalling conditions for many children in India, which contribute to the need for adoption for some.

One-third of world's child brides in India: UNICEF - India - The Times of India.