More and more children from Africa are being adopted abroad. But organizations warn of a lack of regulations and control mechanisms - and the loss of cultural identity. A report on World Children's Day.
"I'm embarrassed that my mother is white." Ten-year-old Lerato Dieterich spits out the sentence angrily and turns away. She doesn't want to talk about the fact that she is adopted. Lerato's adoptive mother, South African Merle Dieterich, explains: It hurts her daughter too much that her biological mother gave her away after she was born. The feeling of not being wanted accompanies most adopted children, says Dieterich, who took in two children. The different skin color creates additional boundaries.
Adoptions outside the cultural circle should be the very last resort in an effort to give children a good life, demands the child protection organization "African Child Policy Forum" (ACPF). Unfortunately, only a few African countries have laws that offer adopted children sufficient protection against human trafficking and loss of cultural identity, according to a study by the pan-African institution based in Ethiopia, which researches and compares children's rights in Africa.
The number of African children adopted abroad has tripled in the last decade. One reason for this is that other countries of origin such as Russia and China have introduced stricter rules for foreign adoptions. Celebrities have also discovered Africa for adoption: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt took in a girl from Ethiopia, and after some wrangling, Madonna has two children from Malawi.
German adoptive parents rank eighth
Between 2004 and 2010, a total of more than 33,000 African children were placed with foreign parents, 21,000 of them from Ethiopia. South Africa is the second most common country of origin. Most adoptive parents came from the USA and Italy. German adoptive parents rank eighth on the ACPF list.
