‘Not agency’s job’ to scout around to meet adoption needs

It is not the job of any Adoption Authority to “scout around” for and develop foreign adoptions from other countries in order to satisfy demand from adoptive parents.

Speaking in advance of a conference on the changing landscape of intercountry adoption, Nigel Cantwell, an international consultant on child protection policy, said it was “not part of the Hague mandate of a central adoption authority or competent authorities in a receiving country to scout around for and develop intercountry adoptions from countries of origin”.

He said the reality was that, as the Hague Convention was becoming more widely ratified, fewer numbers were being declared adoptable from these countries. As a result, increased pressure was being placed on non-Hague countries and countries new to intercountry adoption to provide larger numbers of children.

Mr Cantwell pointed to countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where adoptions went from almost zero to 500 in just four years, and post-earthquake Haiti, where minimal safeguards were “swept aside” in response to such pressure.

“As far as I know, no country is on record as ever having spontaneously and officially requested other countries to adopt its children, but I know of many that are on record as having complained about the pressures they are under to make children available for intercountry adoption,” he said.

Mr Cantwell said intercountry adoption, like alternative care, is “very vulnerable to interests that ignore the human rights of the children involved”.

He stressed the importance of Hague standards in protecting against scenarios which occurred in Romania in the 1990s where adoption was “entirely demand-led” and which was described by the head of Romania’s central adoption authority as “a national tragedy”.

Pointing to the dangers of bilateral agreements with non-Hague countries, Mr Cantwell cited Vietnam as an example. As one of the authors of a Unicef report into adoption practices in Vietnam, he said bilaterals in the mid-2000s allowed “for massive and untracked payments to secure children, and proven cases of manipulation and falsified documents on an industrial scale”.

Although Vietnam has now ratified Hague, it is still requiring “substantial contributions” from potential adoptive parents over and above fees for local procedures. Ireland adopted more than 600 children from Vietnam in 2005-09.

Mr Cantwell said there was a “paradox” involved where countries who have ratified Hague then attempt to source children for adoption from non-Hague countries through bilateral agreements.

He said such agreements are “invariably not the answer” as the sending country either meets Hague standards, meaning it should ratify the convention, or they take account of deficiencies in the country of origin and do not meet standards.

The media was precluded from the conference yesterday.