International adoptions in decline as number of orphans grows

By Kevin Voigt and Sophie Brown, CNN

updated 2:29 AM EDT, Mon September 16, 2013

The chart above shows the total annual decline of overseas adoptions globally; the graphic to the right details the changes in sending and receiving countries. Sources: The Hague Adoption Convention and Peter Selman, Newcastle University.

After rising for decades, overseas adoptions have dropped by nearly half since 2004

International adoption: Saving orphans or child trafficking?

By Kevin Voigt, CNN

Mon September 16, 2013

Advocates say the current international adoption system is holding orphans hostage in red tape

Critics say the hunger for adopting children from developing nations feeds nefarious practices

Rising overseas adoptions -- for black American children

By Sophie Brown, for CNN

updated 1:08 AM EDT, Mon September 16, 2013

Elisa van Meurs with her adoptive parents Bart and Heleene van Meurs on vacation in Switzerland.

Elisa van Meurs with her adoptive parents Bart and Heleene van Meurs on vacation in Switzerland.

International adoption: I was stolen from my family

By Tarikuwa Lemma, Special to CNN

updated 1:09 AM EDT, Mon September 16, 2013

Tarikuwa Lemma was taken from her family in Ethiopia on a promised

Tarikuwa Lemma was taken from her family in Ethiopia on a promised "study trip" to the United States.

The dark history of adoption

New book tells the story of the 1950s and 1960s illegal adoptions from abroad and, not least, the one-man army, Tytte Botfeldt, who on his own raised African children to Danish couples and helped to establish the adoption organizations we know today

Potential adopters must have "good mental health, a healthy harmonious personality, a good marriage, a nuanced environment," wrote county social director and later chairman of the Youth Commission Lars Lundgaard in 1982 on the adoption of foreign children and continued:

“It is not just super people who fulfill these conditions. But there must be surplus and harmony. It is also there in the ordinary Danish family. "

About 15 years ago, the market for illegal adoptions was tried to be brought under control by issuing permits to the persons and organizations that had for years provided Afrotish children to Danish couples in direct contravention of the legislation.

Potential adopters must have "good mental health, a healthy harmonious personality, a good marriage, a nuanced environment", wrote county social director and later chairman of the youth commission Lars Lundgaard in 1982 about the adoption of foreign children and continued:

“It’s not just superhumans who meet these conditions. But there must be profit and harmony. It is also there in the ordinary Danish family. "

Approximately 15 years before, the market for illegal adoptions had been brought under control by issuing permits to the persons and organizations that for years had provided Afro-German children to Danish couples in direct violation of the law.

What had not changed, however, from the illegal 'child import' of the 1950s to the regulated adoption industry of the 1980s, was the belief in "profit and harmony" in the "ordinary Danish family". A view that has now for 60 years legitimized adoptions from abroad to Denmark. Whether it's 'illegitimate' children of white German women and African American soldiers, children of single mothers in Korea or of AIDS-stricken Ethiopian parents, the argument for picking up these children, transporting them across borders and installing them in new homes in Denmark been that they would get better here. Because there is profit and harmony in the ordinary Danish family.

Child imports

The South African Human Rights Commission has launched an investigation into possible discrimination against homosexuals by South African adoption agencies, including Abba Adoptions, which collaborates with the Dutch adoption agency Wereldkinderen. The D66 party has since submitted parliamentary questions to State Secretary Fred Teeven of Security and Justice.

The South African Human Rights Commission has launched its investigation into adoption agencies based on complaints from potential adoptive parents and adoption agencies in South Africa, the United States, and Europe. Among these complaints are complaints from the Netherlands, as one of the agencies being investigated is Abba Adoptions, which collaborates with the Dutch adoption agency Wereldkinderen.

The international complainants allege that adoption agencies discriminate against single people, same-sex adoptive parents, and non-Christian adoptive parents in international adoptions. Two European same-sex couples have filed a complaint against Abba Adoptions, alleging that the agency excludes them based on their sexual orientation.

Abba Adoptions

Abba Adoptions requires that adoptive parents be Christian, heterosexual, and married for at least five years. Last November, the agency received notice from the Central Authority for International Adoptions of the Ministry of Social Development that its adoption policy needed to be amended because the criteria used for adoption were discriminatory. The Central Authority's guidelines prohibit discrimination based on race, gender, language, religion, disability, or financial means. These guidelines are based on South African anti-discrimination legislation and the Children's Act .

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Adoption-vs-Human-Trafficking

There is preference given to inter-country adoptions over domestic adoptions

Do you know that adoption has now become an illegal market for selling babies? In fact, it’s not just babies; young children have also become victims of this mess. It has become a successful business, with adoption agencies reaping huge benefits out of it. But there are solutions to this; take for example, the pilot project which has been introduced in the Kamala Hospital of Pune, wherein both the mother and the child’s movement will be tracked through electronic surveillance.

But is this solution enough? In order to be able to analyse that we first need to be aware of what adoption is, and how it is carried out in India and abroad.

What is Adoption?

Closed adoption system helping traffickers

September 09, 2013 12:35 AM

By India Stoughton

The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Adoption is often seen as a benevolent act. Rather than being brought up in an orphanage, a parentless child is given a home, stability and a loving family. In Lebanon, however, the closed adoption system has helped to transform the practice into something less than benign: a business. When Daniel Ibn Zayd was adopted in 1963, the details of his biological family were fabricated. “In the paperwork we have from the orphanage it lists family name, mother, father, birth date, birthplace,” he explains. “You grow up thinking that this is true.