70 Children Offered For Adoption In armenia Now

70 Children Offered For Adoption In armenia Now

YEREVAN, October 12. /ARKA/. Some 70 children are offered for adoption in Armenia now, Yelena Hayrapetyan, chief of Armenian Labor and Social Affairs Ministry’s division on family problems, said Tuesday at a seminar focused on human trafficking and child adoption problems in Armenia. The seminar was organized by People in Need Program. 

She said that 70% of them are children at age above 10. 

“About 200 families in Armenia and as much again foreigners want to adopt children, but only 20 to 30% of them managed to do it…Married couples prefer newborn babies to keep the adoption secret,” Hayrapetyan said. 

Hayrapetyan said that abandoned children and orphans can be adopted. 

Preference is given to families in Armenia, then Armenians living abroad and foreigners. 

Hayrapetyan said that there are only 15 healthy children in the database. Others have physical or mental problems. 

Remarkable is that foreigners prefer sick children, but if their health problems are curable.

The ministry’s representative said that 50 decisions were made in the first quarter of this year against 87 in 2009 and 120 in 2008. 

She said that the government keeps its eye on adopted children wherever they are through diplomatic offices and consulates. 

No cases of violence have ever been reported. 

Tatevik Bezhanyan, coordinator of the People in Need Program, who spoke at the seminar as well, said that very often adoptions are kept secret in Armenia. That is why cases of child sale happen here. 

“As a rule, people all over the world don’t hide facts of adoption, while Armenians don’t want to do it openly because of national mentality.” –0--

12/10/2010 21:36