Baby Farms Nigeria

On December 15 last, your House asked me to respond to the newspaper article "Baby factories big business" from the Telegraaf of December 12 last. You ask me to answer the question of whether it can be ruled out that children from the baby factories, as mentioned in the newspaper article, ended up in the Netherlands. Because the investigation report of the Joustra Committee will not specifically address the situation in Nigeria, I am informing you about this separately in this letter.

International adoption procedures between the Netherlands and Nigeria have always taken place between the Dutch permit holder Stichting Kind en Toekomst and a mediation agency accredited by the Nigerian government. The children who have been adopted come exclusively from a home registered by the Nigerian government. In addition, in the context of an intercountry adoption procedure, the parents or, if the parents are deceased, a family member, must renounce the child. When it comes to foundlings, the Nigerian police investigate the background of the child and look for possible relatives. In those cases, advertisements are also placed in newspapers asking whether family members of the child concerned can register. Only after this examination can the child be declared adoptable through the Nigerian authorities. The ratification of the adoption procedure on the Nigerian side always takes place in court where the adoptive parents must be present. The children admitted for adoption in the Netherlands are almost all children older than 12 months. In most cases there is a socially burdened background and / or medical problems.

Moreover, from 2013 on the Dutch side, all adoption proposals from Nigeria (and other countries that are not party to the Hague Adoption Convention) have been submitted by the Central Authority.

International Children's Affairs reviewed. The principles of the Hague Adoption Convention and Dutch legislation and regulations were taken as the starting point in the assessment of these adoption proposals.

Within the available options, every effort has been made to ensure that procedures proceed in a careful manner. As the Joustra Committee indicates in its report, it cannot be completely ruled out that abuses have occurred during intercountry adoption. As I have previously informed the House (Parliamentary Papers II 31 265, no. 62), the current working method, in which the principle of legitimate expectations applies and stricter supervision of the procedures, cannot exclude the occurrence of irregularities.

Incidentally, the adoption relationship between the Netherlands and Nigeria has recently ended. Your House was informed about this in a letter to Parliament of 30 June 2020 (Parliamentary Papers II 31 265 no. 72). The reason for this was not the fear of the baby factories but, in short, related to the deteriorated cooperation between the Dutch and Nigerian adoption agency, which made the procedures more difficult.

The Minister for Legal Protection,

Sander Dekker

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