East Africa bans adoption of children by foreigners

East Africa bans adoption of children by foreigners

By mov on August 19, 2015No Comment

The East African Parliament has recommended banning of adoption of children by foreigners, and asked partner states to tighten their laws on adoption as a measure.

The East African lawmakers are particularly unhappy that foreigners have continued to indiscriminately adopt children including those with parents.

They also say that majority of the children adopted have been abused after foreigners cutting off any links between the adopted children and their relations back home.

In a report about child abuse in the region that was adopted by the East African Legislative Assembly on August 19, 2015, the legislator unanimously agreed that all the five partner states that include Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania suspended adoption of children by foreigners, and instead encourage their own citizens to adopt needy orphans.

“The committee commends the temporary ban on interstate adoptions,” the report partly reads.

“The committee recommends to the Assembly to urge the Council of Ministers that interstate adoptions be restricted in all partner states until adequate control and follow up mechanism are instituted. This would also encourage national adoptions through proper sensitization and associated awareness creation,” the legislators on the General Purpose committee that conducted investigations further elaborate in the report.

The report was eventually adopted by the Assembly and upon which other organs of the East African Community will take action to have the pronounced implemented by partner states.

This decision is in line with previous positions already taken by some partner states like Kenya and Rwanda.

In Kenyan, Cabinet officials on November 27, 2014 announced a ban on foreign adoptions Cabinet said it noted that, currently Kenyan laws did not define child sale, child procuring, child trade and child laundering as part of child trafficking.

Kenya also revoked all licences to conduct inter-country adoptions in Kenya with immediate effect.

The new law says that all intended adoptee children living in Kenya must be adopted in Kenya prior to their departure. Any exceptions to this law must be granted directly by the High Court.

In Rwanda, which has about a million orphans as a result of the 1994 Genocide and prevalence of HIV/AIDS, orphanages are being dismantled to pave way for community hubs to support parents going to work. Over the last four years, eight have been established around the country.

If Rwanda is successful in closing all its orphanages by 2020, it will become the first African country to do so.

International adoption was temporarily suspended by Rwanda in August 2010, to allow the country work on implementation of the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-country Adoption, which calls on states to consider national solutions before international adoption. But national adoption is yet to be fully implemented.

“So many Rwandan children were adopted by foreigners, and Rwanda was not happy when those children were not allowed to contact their relatives back home. Even if it is on humanitarian grounds those that have adopted our children should share them with their other relatives,” Hon Patricia Hajabakiga, Rwanda’s representative to the East African Assembly, said in an interview.

“Adoption should not be an end in itself. There should be a monitoring mechanism so that children adopted can be tracked down,” added former Prosecutor General of Rwanda Martin Ngoga, also Rwanda’s representative to the Assembly.

Uganda’s Minister for East African Community Affairs, Shem Bageine, on his part proposed a harsher relationship with countries promoting homosexuality.

During debate of the report by the East African Legislative Assembly on August 19, 2015 Bageine said that citizens from the region that have legalized homosexuality should never be allowed to adopt children from East Africa.

East Africa as a block believes foreigners have abused the system by taking advantage of weak laws in the region to adopt children that are not orphans, he said, adding that some of those children have ended up being abused.

The African Child Policy Forum, an independent, not-for-profit, institution has reported that the majority of so-called “orphans” adopted from Africa by foreigners have at least one parent still alive.

In September 2014, an official report said a boom in Uganda’s “international adoption industry” had led to some children who were not even orphans being taken into care for adoption or child sponsorship schemes.

A parliamentary committee in Uganda investigating illegal adoptions has now heard that more than 120 children left the East African country last year alone, despite some foreigners being granted adoption orders not meeting criteria, and many of the so-called orphans having family.

The Permanent Secretary of Uganda’s Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development that oversees children affairs, Mr Pius Bigirimana, also warned that orphanages had been commercialized, and that 80 per cent of children in them were not orphans.

Whereas in Tanzanian children are increasingly being spirited abroad in a manner likely to raise queries over the administration of the adoption system in the country.

And according to records on the US state department’s website, its nationals adopted 18 children from Tanzania between 2007 and 2010, but the social welfare department has in its records puts a different figure of 12.

Further, of the total 125 cases from 2007 to 2010, only 44 are said to have undergone a complete and mandatory court process as required by the law.

It means that no one can for sure determine the status for the remaining 81 cases. It is possible therefore that these children may have already left the country and skipped the due legal process.

East Africa bans adoption of children by foreigners added by mov on August 19, 2015

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