Child trafficking and illegal adoptions

Two revelations of child trafficking in recent weeks remind us of the need for extreme vigilance everywhere in the world.

Child trafficking in Kenya

One of these child trafficking is in Kenya: an investigation broadcast by the BBC, " These babies for sale on the black market in Nairobi ", with the first episode released in November 2020 revealed the existence of a immense child trafficking.

Director Peter Murimi, co-author of the investigation with Joel Gunter and Tom Watson, was caught up in 2019 ads in local newspapers about missing children. They reveal that women in financial difficulty are led to sell their babies or have them stolen. The infants are then sold by intermediaries to couples in expectation of children; or even, which is cold in the back, to people who organize rituals of child sacrifices.

This market works well because the pressure exerted on women to be mothers is very important in this country. This is what explains Maryana Munyendo , director of the Missing Child association: “ We are Africans, our culture wants you to have a child for a marriage to work, preferably a boy. Otherwise, you go back to the village and you are called a dry wood plank, so what do you do to save your marriage? You are stealing a child. “Sometimes even equally vulnerable people steal infants and then resell them.

All the administrative formalities to commit these abuses are organized in hospitals, in particular the issuance of false birth certificates. The documentary revealed that " The police have noted with great concern that local public hospitals, Nairobi children's homes and senior medical officers, in collusion with the child smugglers, are involved ."

Seven people have already been prosecuted for child trafficking following the broadcast of the first episode on November 15, 2020. Kenya's Ministry of Labor and Social Protection announced, the day before the documentary's broadcast, that he was going to take severe measures against this inhuman traffic. For some stakeholders interviewed in this report, this is only an announcement effect, because the government has been aware of these facts for a long time and has never intervened until then.

Contentious adoptions in Switzerland

The other situation concerns Switzerland, on the occasion of a public apology from the government for having ignored disputed child adoptions for too long.

Federal Councilor Karin Keller Sutter apologized on December 14 on behalf of the Federal Council for the contentious adoptions of 900 Sri Lankan children between 1973 and 1997.

These adoptions were mostly illegal, sometimes with children from "baby farms" in which indigenous women mated with white males so that their offspring were born with a lighter skin color. Sometimes babies were given without the consent of their biological parents. Intermediate lawyers, on the other hand, received high fees, while Sri Lankan mothers received only a few dollars and sometimes even a simple thermos flask as bargaining chips. (AFP report of 12/14/2020)

A former counselor had opened an investigation in 2017 into adoptions that took place in the 1980s and a first report was drawn in February making this observation. He also denounced the lack of firm reaction and the slowness of the Confederation and the cantons in the face of a large number of signs to put an end to this type of adoption.

The Federal Council, after recognizing the suffering of the people concerned, announced the setting up of a working group made up of the cantons, representatives of the Confederation and adopted persons in search of their origins.

The Swiss Federal system can be a cause of this mismanagement because the modalities of adoptions vary a lot according to the canton, the adoption not being centralized.

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