The value debate about adoption – where is it going?
Adoptees have had to live with all the lies and deception they have been told about being given away out of love for a better life in the West.
Photo: PixabayWhy does the collective society so heartily tolerate the injustice done to its "Norwegian" children? And why do they not want to talk about it? Is it because the injustice is built on the basis of our shared values and attitudes?
Community-minded. Adopted from South Korea
On March 26, the Korean Adoption Review Commission (TRC) released its interim report, confirming illegalities and violations of the human rights of adoptees and their biological parents.
Korea is the country in the world that has adopted the most of its children. A total of 250,000 children have been adopted to the Western world, 6,500 to Norway. Foreign adoptees constitute a minority group in Norwegian society.
Why is the debate about adoption absent?
So why is the debate about adoption absent? And why is it so rarely talked about?
Have they become so Norwegianized that they are invisible and forgotten by politicians and media Norway? Even in the public welfare system and aid apparatus, they are not caught. Because their names that they brought with them from their homeland have been removed and washed out. And because they have been as "Norwegian" as everyone else, they have also gone under the radar.
Several adoptees have raised and stood at the forefront of the need for a necessary values debate about adoption. A debate that is not about who has positive and happy experiences with their adoption or not. Or who has been unfortunate in the form of experiencing neglect, abuse, exclusion and racism. Although being adopted is not a prerequisite in itself for experiencing this, being adopted is a vulnerable risk factor. And unfortunately, there are very many who carry such lived experiences.
The structural system failure that has been almost passed down between adoptees, from country to country, government to government and organizations' adoption practices, is a debate that is not raised.
But most absent is the debate that challenges narratives and attitudes around intercountry adoption. And with it, our shared values.
A values debate is now needed that challenges the romanticized narrative that children from poor countries are so much better off in the West.
How to break decades of such attitudes? Attitudes that stigmatize adoptees and oppress them into exclusion?
Many adoptees have had to live with a lifelong debt of gratitude
Many adoptees have had to live with a lifelong debt of gratitude that has become a lifelong traumatically distorted development of their own identity, belonging and connection. It has led to strained relationships in childhood and adolescence. And not gratitude for how lucky they have been to be raised from their roots, separated from their country, culture, language, biological parents, family and people. They have had to carry the sorrowful secret alone their whole lives in order not to deviate from society's narrative about how lucky they have been.
Adoptees have also had to live with all the lies and deception they have been told about being given away in love for a better life in the West. This is how we have defended the Norwegianization of thousands of children by depriving them of the close bond between mother and child. What makes us believe that women in the “south” are less happy with their children?
It is necessary to take the moral values debate that takes a critical look and asks critical questions about how far one is willing to go to satisfy one's own desire and need for children.
Some adults are really so desperate and selfish that they ignore Bufdir's decision to withdraw permission to adopt from a number of countries. The Directorate cannot guarantee the safety of children and their biological families from countries Norway has previously adopted from. Nevertheless, 60 people are notifying prospective adopters of a mass lawsuit against the state . They are willing to ignore the danger of having a child illegally - to satisfy and cover their own child desire and needs. A child who may have been stolen, kidnapped or trafficked.
There is nothing wrong or shameful about wanting children. The expectations and hopes, and the sadness and loss of not being able to have children of your own, are understandable and allowed. But it is crazy and morally reprehensible if this makes someone willing to overlook the fact that government professionals do not guarantee the safety of vulnerable children and parents in "difficult countries".
What is wrong with Norwegian values and attitudes? To believe and demand that we have the right to adopt children at any cost? When it is actually not a human right to have children!
The 1996 Hague Convention states that the best interests of the child shall be paramount in intercountry adoption. According to the Convention, intercountry adoption is a last resort for the child, after all options in the home country have been exhausted. This means that it takes a lot before it is in the child's best interests to move to the other side of the world and lose their identity and connection to their origins.
The focus on the best interests of the child also means that international adoption should not meet the childless' need to have children. So why have most adopters received treatment for childlessness, only to then join a years-long adoption queue in what appears to be a last resort?
With the knowledge we have today, I also believe that the Hague Convention is outdated and needs to be evaluated and updated. It does not meet today's standards with the knowledge we have about the child's perspective.
The adoption scandal in South Korea is not just about systematic criminal human trafficking (child trafficking), or just about children of single mothers and children born out of wedlock where women were shamed.
But also about outright ethnic cleansing of children with parents of different ethnicities.
Because they were so-called mixed-race children, handicapped children, and children with mental and physical disabilities who were adopted away. South Korea has systematically used its adoption program to get rid of certain population groups. Something the Korean Commission of Inquiry and others have uncovered.
Time to put some of that into words too?
Drawing parallels to the Holocaust is a hard thing to swallow, and very difficult for many to take in. But while Kristallnacht is commemorated every year, adoptees in our modern era have had to stand alone and for themselves to demand redress for the injustices that have been done to them – and continue to be done.
To believe otherwise is not only naive, but a denial.
When the injustice inflicted on this minority group is finally acknowledged by the Korean Commission of Inquiry, and violations of their human rights are acknowledged, the state media does not bother to provide the people with this necessary and relevant public information. NRK says they “do not have room for more adoption cases”. They are therefore unable to give this injustice space in the news where other major international media houses have given it space. It is shameful!
Politicians are also willing to go to immoral lengths to support adopters' child wishes. For even though Bufdir recommended a temporary halt to all international adoptions while the investigation of international adoptions is ongoing, the then Minister of Children and Family Affairs, Kjersti Toppe, did not believe a halt was " too intrusive" . Although Bufdir could not guarantee that Norway would not continue to contribute to human rights violations. At the same time, she strongly urged Norwegian women, who herself has 6 children, to give birth to more children .
Is this a desperate pressure from society that a perfect family should consist of only one with children?
Our elected officials shy away from raising the issue in the Storting out of fear of being exposed. Is it cowardice, fear of stepping into a hornet's nest of resistance, or a lack of knowledge about adoption that scares them away? And the left, who in the name of goodness and mercy are champions of human rights – where are their roaring angry voices about the injustice that the media has uncovered against this minority group?
Norway is a country that likes to see itself as a world leader in human rights.
So why is Norway so silent, when the world is recognizing human rights violations against their adopted children? The children who have been so important to bring to Norway?
The public apology must be terribly deep-rooted. It will be an acknowledgement and redress that acknowledges the injustice. And strengthens the basis for both individual cases and mass lawsuits in the justice system.
Many still think that no injustice has been committed against adoptees and their biological parents. Because it is legal to adopt, it is enshrined by the authorities of all countries. And the value attitude that we have done the children and the mothers a favor, many have deeply rooted in themselves. We have given the children a better life in prosperity and security, right?
Is the ideological mindset of a win-win situation to satisfy the wishes of childless people and save children from poverty and misery in their own country so ingrained – that Western countries are unwilling to let go of their own superiority in the name of mercy?
Is that why Norway doesn't dare to address the values debate? Because then we have to look ourselves in the eye and challenge the society on which we build our values?