Children and Families Face Irreparable Harm as Cambodia Reopens Intercountry Adoptions

March 29, 2022 - We are deeply alarmed by Cambodia reopening intercountry adoptions and the Italian government’s apparent disclosure that at least nine potential adoptions from Cambodia are being processed by Italian adoption agencies. We fear these decisions will lead to more families being irreparably torn apart by a poorly regulated system that has failed to protect children’s best interests in the past.

Cambodia reports having sent 3,696 children abroad for adoption between 1998 and 2011. The country suspended intercountry adoptions following evidence of fraud and corruption. Cambodian officials forged documents to falsely change some children’s names or ages or claim they were orphaned or abandoned, before children were adopted abroad without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

Cambodia today still lacks a sufficient child protection system, judicial system and anti-corruption measures to guarantee that adoptions will proceed legally and ethically. Despite Cambodia acceding to the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption in 2007 and enacting numerous laws and policies, there is no guarantee that intercountry adoptions would occur in children’s best interests.

Cambodian and Italian government agencies have ignored requests for information from LICADHO in recent months about the reopening of intercountry adoptions, including requests for information about the bilateral agreement, related procedures, and when children are expected to leave Cambodia.

Since 2017, six families have approached LICADHO to seek information about 15 children who were fraudulently adopted from Cambodia in the 2000s. Each family had temporarily placed their children in shelters or orphanages after being told their children would receive care and an education before returning home. Parents often only learned their children had left the country when they returned to visit them and found them missing. Each family has spent years seeking information about their children. While some children have been located abroad following extensive investigations, for others there has been no confirmation of where they are, who is caring for them, or if they are even alive, leaving families in a state of limbo and continued suffering.

It is clear that Cambodia’s current systems still fail to protect children living in shelters and orphanages and lack competence and transparency. Since 2020, LICADHO has worked on four cases involving 10 children who were placed in institutions in recent years. In each case, authorities refused to tell the parents or guardians where their children were for months. In one case, a child went missing from a state-run institution and a process of domestic adoption began without the knowledge or consent of the child’s mother and despite her desire to be reunited with her child. Each child was only reunited with their families following multiple interventions.

This context makes the severe risks of reopening intercountry adoptions clear. At least 5,440 Cambodian children lived in institutions as of last year, some of whom still have a living parent. Family-based care within Cambodia, such as family reunification, kinship care, foster care and domestic adoptions, are all preferable over intercountry adoptions, yet these systems are not fully functioning and each lack adequate resources, social workers, and training for staff.

The only way to guarantee that children are not again wrongfully and fraudulently taken from their families is to immediately halt all pending intercountry adoptions from Cambodia. The Cambodian government and receiving states must establish mechanisms for those who have already been harmed by intercountry adoptions, including adopted children, birth parents and adoptive parents, to seek truth and justice and reconnect with loved ones if they choose. Sending more children abroad before these past wrongs have been addressed, and before there are failsafe and transparent measures to guarantee children’s best interests, would cause further irreparable harm.

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