Terre des hommes will no longer be organizing adoptions
Wed, 6 Mar 2013 14:16 GMT
Source: Member
International adoption has been a part of the activities of Terre des hommes since the early 1960s. But from Edmond Kaiser and the first children arriving by their dozens, for whom adoptive families were sought urgently, to the complexity of today’s procedures, international adoption has come a long way. Firstly, the criteria and the demands are now far stricter for the adopters, the number of applications has significantly decreased and the profile of the children put up for international adoption is currently very different from the expectations of the future parents. Secondly, structural changes in some of the countries of origin, notably in India, no longer enable us to assume our responsibilities towards the children and the adoptive parents. In such a background of evolution, Terre des hommes will no longer be serving as an intermediary for adoptions, but will continue to advocate for the children’s protection, encouraging keeping or returning the children to their own families, or having recourse to alternative care options such as host families in the child’s own country.
For some years we have been witnessing a gradual decrease in international adoptions. All host countries are concerned, in North America as well as in Europe. Keeping a child in his biological family, alternatives to the institutionalization of children, the increase of national adoptions, have all played their part in this decrease. In the United States, for example, in 2004, 24,000 children from other countries were adopted. In 2011, only 9,300 international adoptions were counted.
