Vietnam adoption procedures treat children as ‘commodities’

CORRUPT adoption procedures in Vietnam had reduced the country’s children to a commodity worth “less than a pig”.

The disclosure emerged in internal US State Department documents which reveal a network of people, from adoption agency representatives, orphanage directors, hospital administrators right through to government officials and local police, were profiting by paying for children, as well as coercing and defrauding natural parents into giving up their children for adoption.

The documents, from 2007 and 2008, show in some cases, children were simply stolen from their families to sell them to unsuspecting American couples. Throughout hundreds of pages of material, US officials – including the country’s ambassador to Vietnam, Michael W Michalak, and Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty – express their growing concerns over adoption practices in Vietnam.