Italy is about to resume the adoption of Cambodian children

Today it could take only a few months before Italian adoptive families willing to adopt internationally can bring Cambodian children home

A lady took Jane to Kammpong Thom Orphanage by car when she was just a few days old. No, someone found Jane abandoned between two factories near the Monivong Bridge in Phnom Penh. Not yet, her mother died a few hours after her birth and no one came to claim her at the hospital.

These are the three stories that a Dutch adoptive mother, Meta Meulenbelt-Hörz, heard about the discovery of her adopted daughter Jane, a fictional name. No one knows which of these stories is the true one.

“They knew there was something left unsaid about our daughter's story, but we never managed to find out the truth,” said Ms. Meta Meulenbelt-Hörz.

Jane is now 21 years old and lives in the Netherlands with her adoptive parents and her Chinese adoptive brother. And she is just one of thousands of Cambodian children who, between 1980 and 2010, were given up for international adoption.

The majority of those children, now adults, do not know their true origins, nor how they ended up in the orphanage or if their biological parents are still alive and looking for them.

Today it could take only a few months before Italian adoptive families willing to adopt internationally can bring Cambodian children home.

After halting all procedures in 2009 due to corruption and human trafficking allegations , Cambodia lifted its ban on international adoptions in 2014. However, the country has taken substantial steps towards fully reopening in mid-2022 by resuming discussions with the Italian government. Countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom, France and Australia banned adoptions from Cambodia in the early 2000s and have shown no interest in resuming them, thus defining Cambodia as not yet fully aligned with international child protection standards.

For its part, Italy has never stopped the procedures and has instead always been for all this time at the forefront of bilateral discussions with the local authorities, aiming to resume adoptions as soon as there were permits.

As of January 2023, according to the official website Commission for International Adoptions, the central Italian governmental authority, there are still 9 pending adoptions from Cambodia with three organizations: CIFA Onlus, Community of Sant'Egidio ACAP and Lo Scoiattolo ONLUS. Among them, only the last NGO has confirmed to the writer that there are two pending adoption procedures suspended until further notice.

“2023 is the year,” said Michele Torri, international adoption representative at Amici dei Bambini, one of eight Italian organizations waiting to be authorized to resume international adoptions from Cambodia.

"We are so close to receiving the final go-ahead from the Cambodian international adoption authority that we can almost safely say that the authorized agencies can begin preparing to resume the new adoption procedures from Cambodia within the next few months."

However according to Torri, the Italian Commission has made a "cautious and controlled" opening allowing only a limited number of annual adoptions and for children with special health needs in order to effectively monitor each process from start to finish and to verify the legitimacy of every single step.

In the early 2000s, international investigations brought to light a major corruption scandal linked to an extremely large number of Cambodian children given up for international adoption without the authorization of their biological parents, accompanied by false documents falsely stating their orphan status in addition to the change of names and ages.

Despite Cambodia signing the Hague Convention on the Protection of the Child and Cooperation in Respecting International Adoption in 2007 and despite the approval of the International Adoption Law in 2009, the Cambodian child protection system has failed to comply with international standards. A decade later the government with the support of UNICEF improved the procedures for national adoption. In the end these were never finalized for the arrival of the Covid-19.

With the same goal, UNICEF recently supported the Ministry of Social Affairs, Rehabilitation of Veterans and Youth in producing a draft child protection law regulating adoptions.

UNICEF communication specialist Bunly Meas explained to the writer that the law, once approved, will fill some of the existing deficiencies in the process and procedures such as the creation of a register of international adoptions.

While the legislation is sufficient to convince Italy that Cambodia is ready to resume intercountry adoption, the lack of transparency about new mechanisms and procedures remains a cause for concern among child protection and human rights organizations.

The Cambodian human rights group LICADHO follows government developments on this issue and works with families who have lost their children to illegitimate intercountry adoption procedures.

Group outreach director Naly Pilorge does not believe Cambodia can guarantee that intercountry adoptions will not be tainted by the same fraud and corruption that has characterized past adoptions.

“Cambodia has barely acknowledged past abuses, as there have been no significant investigations or prosecutions,” Pilorge said. "No assistance has been given to help families of origin or adopted children who are still suffering."

Pilorge also pointed out that the Cambodian government and its institutions are among the worst in the world for perceived corruption and weak rule of law. Pilorge believes this makes it almost impossible to ensure the best interests of children.

"In the current context, it is unthinkable that Cambodia would try to resume international adoptions and it is inconceivable that countries like Italy risk infringing the rights of Cambodian children by participating in this reopening".

To respond to the criticisms Torri argued that, although there are and always will be risks associated with the procedures, the adoption authorities must evaluate a broader set of conditions.

“The choice is whether to close everything and not take risks and go the easy way leaving Cambodian children in institutions without giving even one of them the chance to find a permanent family, or take the risk and activate the mechanisms even where the total guarantees they are not yet entirely ready in practice,” Torri said.

But the lack of transparency is what makes some scholars question the effectiveness of the new laws. Patricia Fronek, a social worker and Griffit University associate professor who has published various works on the alternative care system in Cambodia, even argued that "the adoption of children with special needs has continued even after the 2009 ban" and that they have been sent an unknown number of children abroad.

The Central Agency for Intercountry Adoption did not comment. UNICEF said it is "not aware of any recent cases of international adoptions", although there is no official register despite articles in the Child Protection Act that provide for it.

To compensate for this shortcoming, the social affairs ministry recently adopted the use of a UNICEF-supported management system that collects such information, “but there are no measures for monitoring, reporting and family ties after the adoption,” Bunly said.

But regardless of bureaucratic procedures and improvements in safeguards nationwide, families and children in Cambodia and around the world are still searching for their blood relatives and for answers.

The Meulenbelt-Hörz family adopted Jane in 2002 when the girl was one year old. Her birth certificate states "of unknown parentage and mother" and a rough estimate of her birth is October 2001.

As the Cambodian government did not have a unified adoption registry at the time, Jane and her parents were unable to find her biological parents with a search of official records, forcing Jane to rely on DNA testing.

On her second trip to Cambodia in 2019, she and her adoptive parents placed hundreds of flyers near factories where she would be abandoned. A short time later two families came forward doing DNA testing.

Neither family had DNA matches, but this marked the first step in the creation of DNA Cambodia, a databank project done together with local NGO KFCO that helps reunite families separated during war. for genocide and poverty. So far there are over 300 DNA profiles collected within MyHeritage and Family Tree Databases.

While all adoptions done before the ban were arranged by independent facilitators rather than agencies or organizers, now all international adoptions must be handled by government-authorized agencies. Unlicensed private companies and orphanages can no longer handle global adoptions directly.

But neither Meulenbelt-Hörz nor Fronek believe such an improvement will change their opposition to international adoptions. Fronek believes that strengthening a national foster care system is the only effective and safe solution for the deinstitutionalisation of orphaned or abandoned Cambodian children.

“If the foster care system is strong, children can find a secure, permanent family immediately without ever living in an institution,” Fronek said.

Deinstitutionalization is also the goal of the US non-profit organization HOLT International which leads domestic adoptions in Cambodia with government support and works to strengthen the foster care system in the country, Vice President Thoa Bui said:

"We really don't want to see kids coming of age in orphanages."

Lynelle Long, director who founded the global network of internationally adopted children, InterCountry Adoptee Voices, born and adopted in Vietnam and now Australia, sees foster care as a more suitable and safer option for orphans or abandoned children .

While from a legal point of view, adoption is a private transaction, and once successful no government or NGO has the right or duty to supervise the children, the foster care system remains under government control. In that way, the safety of children in the foster care system is constantly ensured by government-authorized entities.

"Adopted children very often end up in abusive families in foreign countries," said Lynelle Long. “No one guarantees that they are safe and healthy once they are adopted. Those in the foster care system are supervised and always have the opportunity to report the abuse to the country's central authority."

She, like hundreds of other adopted children, have experienced isolation and racism in their communities as well as a lack of understanding from their adoptive parents.

“Adoptive parents often have a difficult time understanding what their adoptive children are experiencing,” Long said. “They come from a different cultural background and cannot handle the psychological burden of their adopted children”.

Meulenbelt-Hörz also agrees to avoid adoption at all costs.

“After seeing all the hardships my little ones have had to go through, I am no longer in favor of adoption. All the children involved in the adoption are children with trauma”.

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