Response to Christian World Adoption Statement September 16 2009-09-17

Foreign Correspondent approached Christian World Adoption at least half a dozen times requesting an interview with the organisation, but received no response to emails or phone messages. Foreign Correspondent was fully prepared to travel to CWA's head office in South Carolina to conduct the interview. CWA chose not to respond and therefore not to participate in the program.

Foreign Correspondent disputes a number of claims and assertions in a statement from CWA posted directly to producer Mary Ann Jolley well after the program `Fly Away Children' aired. We understand the statement has been widely circulated by CWA to its constituents, clients and others.

We will deal only with the disputed claims.

1) "The lady called Michelle, who is shown in the video interviewing children to be adopted, was not a CWA staff person…"

Orphanage ordeal

Posted by admin on July 19, 2009 at 3:29 pm in Other Top Stories

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No way for mushroom orphanage homes? ? Social Worker

Main News

Agona Swedru, Sept. 17, GNA - Mrs Monica Siaw, Agona West Municipal Officer of the Department of Social Welfare, has warned that the government would not hesitate to close down all mushroom orphanage homes which are not registered.

She said Ghana had begun to experience a sudden mushrooming of orphanages estimated a 127 nationwide, and that there was the need to check the trend.

Mrs Siaw noted that a majority of the almost 4,000 children living in these unregistered Orphanages in the country are not orphans.

GOOGLE TRANSLATION:

Adoption may be child trafficking

12 foreign adoptees: Western needs should not allow human trafficking

We support the Social Ministry's decision not to extend

adoption agreement with Vietnam.

Guatemalan army stole children for adoption, report says

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Children stolen for adoption in the U.S., Sweden, Italy and France, report says

Some parents were killed, others were unharmed when soldiers came calling

Investigators examined period between 1977 and 1989, 'peak' adoption period

Sierra Leone

Adoption Alert

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Bureau of Consular Affairs

Office of Children’s Issues

NEWS MIDDLE EAST

Egypt jails US couples for adoption

The couples, all Christians, were trying to adopt children from a Christian orphanage [AFP]

Two US couples have been jailed for two years in Egypt for illegal child trafficking.

Seven other people were also sentenced in the case, first of its kind in the country, which became publicly known earlier this year after the US embassy in Cairo reported it was suspicious of the couples after they tried to get their adopted children out of Egypt.

Draft law promotes adoptions by locals

(17-09-2009)

HA NOI — The draft law on adoption will encourage more Vietnamese people to adopt orphaned children, currently numbering about 200,000, the National Assembly’s Standing Committee heard at its session in Ha Noi yesterday.

According to a report prepared by Deputy Minister of Justice Dinh Trung Tung, the biggest difference between the draft law and existing adoption laws is the specific encouragement for domestic adoptions.

Tung said 20,000 children had been adopted over the past five years, only 13,000 of whom were adopted by domestic families. The rest were adopted by foreigners.

CWA Response to Australian TV Broadcast

Christian World Adoption (CWA) has taken great strides over its many years of work in the field of inter-country adoption to ensure that its practices, and the practices of those it works with, are both ethical and legal. This is paramount to CWA because the rights and well being of each child has always been our foremost concern.

Inter-country adoption is extremely difficult work. It is difficult because of the layers of law involved, which are necessary in order to safeguard children’s rights; because of the rigorous accreditation that agencies like CWA voluntarily submit to; and because of the practical challenges of communicating about complex concepts with people whose language, education level and culture differ so greatly from our own.

In any field, there are instances where someone with a critical or even cynical perspective can take a limited amount of information and mold public perception to suit their purposes. More directly to the point, if someone desired to discredit the work of inter-country adoption agencies using limited amounts of information, perhaps taken out of context and without rebuttal, there is opportunity for them to do that. But there is always another side of the story.

CWA was recently asked to participate in the production of an investigative journalism program addressing Ethiopian adoption. Taking into consideration the amount of resources that would need to be devoted to that process, CWA elected not to participate. This decision was based on the reality that the critics of inter-country adoption are many. We determined that the greater good would be served by focusing on our work, rather than on trying to change the minds of those who may have a negative agenda.