Do you have a child?
Can you imagine, your child to be “stolen” from you and sent for adoption to another country?
Could you imagine that the current adoption system, legalises such practices?
That your child has now a new name, a new identity and a new family?
That you have NO rights anymore?
That you cannot even see your child anymore?
That no authority is helping you?
That the agencies who were involved in these crimes are still working in adoption?
Is this in the best interest of your child?
Since
its beginning intercountry adoption from India has been ridden with
murky scandals of child kidnapping, falsifying paperwork, outright
trading and tragic stories spelled out broadly in the media. .
It is
widely believed among adoption experts worldwide, that ratifying the
Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect
of Intercountry Adoption (1993) will help reduce malpractice in
adoptions. But does regulating adoptions help in weeding out
malpractises? Or does the regulating of intercountry adoptions, because
of the strong demand for children, lead to a legalised market for
children without much effective control and with large sums of money
involved?
Many of the children were no orphans, but had been placed into (temporary) care by relatives. Agreement for adoption was often faked or given without full understanding that the children would be adopted abroad and all legal bonds permanently severed. It is crucial to realise that the adoption papers created in the very beginning of the process, form the basis for every later step in the process. At no point does any authority crosscheck whether the papers and their content reflect the truth. At no stage does anyone question if sufficient efforts were made to rehabilitate these children with their parents, or with the extended family or others in the community.
Until the 2006 donations were allowed. Thus, orphanages labelled the amounts (3500 – 12.000 dollars) charged from adoptive parents as “donations. Since 2006 an agency may formally charge a flat fee of 3.500 $ and no more donations are allowed. But orphanages violate this rule and foreign agencies charge country fee´s far in excess of this amount.
Recent adoption scandals proved that this does not seem to worry the authorities much. Not in India, not in the receiving countries.
A legalised Child Market
Regulating
intercountry adoption means defining exact procedures on how to
relinquish children, how to declare children as abandoned and putting
deadlines on the time to find local care solutions. Regulating
Intercountry adoption also means the Courts will validate adoptions as
good as blindly and afterwards completed with a Hague certificate by
the central authority. This creates a watertight system where that
protects adopdtive parents, but leaves the original parents powerless
and without support.
In the receiving countries, the Indian
regulation leads to a mystification of what really happens in India.
Their impression is that since adoptions are well regulated with checks
and balances in place, children are indeed “orphans” and that the best
solution for them is to be adopted by foreigners. Media exposure may
shake this confidence short term, but after expert reports confirm the
legality of procedures, the confidence quickly returns.
The rules developed under the guise of the Hague Convention do not prevent abuses, but instead prevent them from being seen. They mystify and hide the inherent injustice behind a legalised smokescreen. The result is the demand-driven creation of ‘legal orphans’, who according to paperwork could not be cared for in their own country. The reality is that India could easily care for the 700 to 1,000 children send abroad yearly. This is a matter of political choice.
—Arun Dohle
Arun Dohle is an adult adoptee living in Germany. Arun was kidnapped as a baby in India and adopted by an unsuspecting couple from Germany. He is active in adoption reform and anti-child trafficking and writes and researches extensively on the subject.
Links:
Adopted Boy Comes Back for Mother
In Search of Mother with an Aching Heart
Adoption Racket Opens Can of Worms
Madonna File, United Adoptees International
Inside Story of an Adoption Scandal
Court Turns Away German In Search of His Mother
