Reopening intercountry adoptions will put Cambodian children and their families at risk, a group of NGOs said in a statement Wednesday, urging the Cambodian government to stop the process.
Cambodia suspended intercountry adoption in 2009, following reports of unethical actions connected to adoptions. Multiple other countries also banned intercountry adoption from Cambodia during the 2000s. But in the last couple months, Italy and Cambodia have been taking steps to resume adoptions of Cambodian children.
Cambodian rights groups Cambodian Center for Human Rights, ADHOC and Licadho, along with the international group Intercountry Adoptee Voices, released a joint statement asking Cambodia and Italy to immediately halt any actions leading to the resumption of intercountry adoptions.
A 2018 Licadho report states that thousands of Cambodian children were adopted overseas between the late 1980s and 2009, but many of the children were not orphans. Rather, their parents had placed them in orphanages due to poverty.
“The reopening of intercountry adoptions will only put Cambodian children and families at risk. Adoptions from Cambodia throughout the late 1990s and 2000s were defined by fraud, corruption and coercion,” Licadho outreach director Naly Pilorge said.
1 min