“Preventing adoption abuses is almost impossible”

Elvira Loibl awarded Hustinx Prize for research into illegal adoption

03-09-2024 · Interview

Child trafficking, corruption, falsified documents: international adoption has its dark sides. Elvira Loibl, Maastricht criminologist and assistant professor at the law faculty, has been researching them for years. She was awarded the Edmond Hustinx Prize during the Opening of the Academic Year.

“The ultimate humanitarian act.” That was the image Austrian Elvira Loibl had of adoption before she came to Maastricht for her PhD track in 2014. “Just like so many people, I saw it as a purely positive thing: you’re saving the life of a child on the streets and offering them a life in a prosperous country. But this turns out mostly to be a romanticised, Western perspective. It is often paired with serious malpractice. In many countries, there are human traffickers who actively pursue adoption as a way to earn money. They kidnap children, or buy them off poor families, to then offer them up as ‘orphans’ to adoption agencies. Furthermore, the procedures are often corrupt.”

It’s an interesting topic for a criminologist. “But I did frequently ask myself, who am I doing this for? The number of adoptions has been falling steadily for years, thanks in part to IVF and surrogacy. I assumed that my dissertation would disappear straight into an archive forever after my promotion.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. The subject is now firmly in the spotlight, especially since the Joustra commission concluded in 2021 that the Dutch government had ignored serious abuses in intercountry adoptions between the 1960s and the 1990s. As an immediate result, the cabinet chose to call a temporary halt to international adoption. A permanent ban followed in May of this year.

A Trojan horse

According to Loibl, the timing is a coincidence. “The Joustra commission started a few days before I obtained my doctorate in 2019, so my dissertation was not the trigger. My focus also lay on a later period: from the 1990s to the present.” The dividing line between these two periods is the Hague Adoption Convention, which was signed by both the countries that ‘send’ and ‘receive’ adopted children. It is full of agreements and procedures to prevent illegal adoption.

But it has failed to stop abuse, says Loibl. In fact, in her dissertation she described the convention as a Trojan horse. “Many sending countries don’t have the resources for or the intention of abiding by the convention. Meanwhile receiving countries often blindly assume that it is being followed.”

There are no exact figures on the number of illegal adoptions. “It’s hard to check if the child was legally placed in the adoption process in their home country. Documents can be falsified to ‘launder’ adoptions. The abuses often only comes to light when the adopted children start looking into their roots as adults.”

Ideological

This is why Loibl predominantly focused on the Netherlands in her research: where are the pitfalls here? During her research, she spoke to adoption agencies. In addition to the unwarranted trust in the adoption convention, Loibl discovered a few more weaknesses. “These agencies are often financially dependent on the number of adoptions. They don’t receive subsidies and so have to keep generating an income. They’re also often very ideologically driven, convinced they’re ‘saving’ these children. This means that thorough checks are often skipped or a blind eye is turned to malpractice. It’s why the Dutch government had been working on a revised system since 2021, where all adoptions would be processed through a public institution.”

But that system was never realised. A motion supported by a parliamentary majority forced a change of course: a full ban. Was it a wise decision? Hard to say, says Loibl. “On the one hand, as a criminologist, I’m not in favour of bans. They drive things ‘underground’ and you lose control. You also block cases where everything was done correctly. On the other hand, there have been multiple attempts at revision and yet abuses are ongoing. It’s almost impossible to prevent them entirely. I’m stuck on those two schools of thought. There’s a reason I had to rewrite the conclusion of my dissertation five times.”

Compensation

While it is hard to substantiate, Loibl’s research will have played a role in the cabinet’s decision-making. “I’m the only one in the Netherlands who is researching illegal adoption from a criminological standpoint. My research has been mentioned in letters from the ministry. That’s a satisfying feeling.”

What is she focusing on now that international adoption has been banned? Loibl points to the apology that the Dutch state – in the guise of then State Secretary for Legal Protection Dekker – made to the victims in 2021, for turning a blind eye and not intervening. “The next step is compensation, but the silence on that front is deafening. I’m currently investigating what form this could take, for example, financial compensation for people who were illegally adopted, and help from the state in finding biological parents or family in their countries of birth.” The 15 thousand euros of the Hustinx Prize can help with researching compensation. “I’m thinking about using it to organise a conference for adoptees, where they can voice exactly what it is they are looking for.”

Hustinx Prize

The Edmond Hustinx Prize for science – a prize worth 15,000 euros, awarded annually by the Edmond Hustinx Foundation during the Opening of the Academic Year – is intended to “underscore the meaning of science in practice” and “to accentuate” the importance of Maastricht University to Limburg. The faculties take turns awarding the prize; this year is the turn of the Faculty of Law.