Where is the intercountry adoption regulation?

Yung Fierens, on behalf of adoption interest groups Adoption Schakel Connecteert, CAFE, CAW, Racines Perdues Raìces Perdidas, Empreintes Vivantes.

YUNG FIERENSFebruary 1, 2023 , 03:00

In June last year, a resolution on intercountry adoptions was voted in the Chamber of Representatives.

With this, the submitter of the resolution Michel De Maegd (MR) was supported by the entire hemisphere in asking the Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open Vld) to investigate illegal adoptions that have taken place from various countries to Belgium.

Eight months later, Van Quickenborne seems to make little move to accede to this request, supported by his own party. The minister replied to questions about the lack of any initiative, including that he had been 'very busy'. He refused to answer the request to set a date for a first meeting. He also indicated that he did not know exactly what was expected of him.

However, the harrowing testimonies of adoptees and adoptive parents in pre-vote hearings left little to the imagination. And should the citizens of this country expect that kidnapping, identity fraud and child trafficking would sufficiently motivate a justice minister to take prompt and targeted action.

Van Quickenborne's hesitant attitude arouses surprise and deep disappointment among the victims of illegal adoptions and among interest groups on both sides of the language border. Once again they feel unseen, unheard and abandoned.

Especially since other European countries such as Denmark, Norway, France and Switzerland could immediately decide to launch independent investigations as soon as malpractice in intercountry adoptions came to light. These include adoptees who were abducted as children and adopted illegally from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, India, Chile and South Korea.

The latter two countries have now ordered their own investigation into what went wrong with the adoptions of tens of thousands of their most vulnerable children. Thousands of them also ended up in Belgium from the 1970s.

If these supposedly sending countries dare to confront what is for them an embarrassing and painful part of their national history, why is Belgium delaying doing the same?

The statement that the UN issued in September 2022, calling on member states to take illegal adoptions seriously, also fell on deaf ears with the Justice and Foreign Affairs departments. However, both play an all-determining role in the establishment of adoption agreements.

Adoption should be in the best interests of the child as stipulated in the Hague Adoption Convention, which Belgium ratified almost 18 years ago.

However, we, the adoptees in Belgium, wonder what interest is served if a Minister of Justice systematically ignores victims of child trafficking.

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