Imagine a picturesque American couple who just arrived home from their trip across the world. Unlike their departure from their home a month earlier, they are carrying a baby, and they both have smiles stretched across their faces. They just adopted a child from a poverty and crime-riddled country. Little did they know across the world there is a similar couple who mourns the loss of the child they just gained. A couple who would have loved and raised this child to become a happy adult. For years more developed countries (MDCs) and less developed countries (LDCs) have had a toxic relationship; MDCs, namely the US, have a consistently growing demand for needy and internationally adopted children, which the LDCs supply them with by whatever means necessary. With high demand comes a high price, which the corrupted adoption agencies soak up. There is very little regulation on adoptions which allows criminals to take advantage of residents of LDCs. The government should create new policies regarding international adoption because currently the system is riddled with kidnapping, fraud, and corruption.
Kidnapping infants to put up for adoption has become a popular crime within less developed countries. This crime was found to be committed several times around the globe for the purpose of international adoption. Defense for Children International (DCI) conducted a study in Pichincha (Italy) when the number of children adopted drastically increased. They discovered that kidnapping fueled the high adoption rate, and the popular location for this crime was at busy marketplaces since “the vast majority [of salespersons] take their children to work with them because other child care options are not available, individuals… would take advantage of busy moments to spirit away the vendor's infant or toddler when the vendor was involved in making a sale” (Fiewager, 2). Parents’ unfortunate financial situations force them into a position vulnerable to criminals who rip their children away from them. Such a tragic crime should not become a trend, and parents should not be punished for their lack of funds for daycare. Pichincha was not the only location where a similar appalling crime was committed; child abduction was also a frequent crime in Guatemala. One tragic example of this was one of Raquel Par. In 2006, Raquel Par, a Guatemalan woman, reported being drugged on a bus, waking up to find her year-old baby missing; in 2007, Par learned that her daughter had been adopted by an American couple. This tore Raquel apart: no parent should have to suffer such a tragedy. As horrific as these crimes are they are still present in the world and affect many.
Adoption agencies also often use parents’ lack of education in LDCs as prey for loving parents. Education is greatly lacking in LDCs, so many lower-income parents never learn to read or write. One of these parents was Abbo, a Ugandan woman whose husband left her and only wanted the best for her child. When Abbo heard an American couple was willing to sponsor her child’s education, she quickly agreed to send her child to boarding school with the occasional visit. Unfortunately, this dream opportunity did not turn out as Abbo had wished; she had agreed to give up her parental rights (Cavell, 4). The adoption agency used Abbo’s illiteracy and longing for a bright future for her son to get her to give up her child unknowingly. This appalling crime was particularly recurring in Brazil. Similar to Abbo, many parents were taken advantage of for their illiteracy, but they also used their lack of knowledge of legal terminology to deceive the parents (Cardarello, 3). These fraudulent adoptions take advantage of the parents who only wish the best for their children.
The demand for adoptive children allows adoption agencies to upcharge parents in more developed countries and then misuse the profit for their own benefit. Families in MDCs are eager to pay outrageous prices for adopted children: “Prospective adoptive parents in the United States will pay adoption agencies between $15,000 and $35,000 for the chance to bring home a little one” (Herrman, IV). The high demand for children attracts corruption within the system. In Cambodia, this issue became very apparent when ICE agents investigated several suspicious orphanages. They discovered that these so-called orphanages were dumps smelling of feces full of rusty cribs covered in excrement. In some places, the babies were naked and filthy and kept in ‘stash houses’. These conditions were particularly outrageous because “Each time an adoption took place, $3,500 was given to this criminal enterprise by the adoptive parents for the betterment of the orphans left behind in Cambodia. The [adoption agencies], however, used the donated orphan funds to buy beachfront real estate in Hawaii and other luxury items” (Herman, 5). Adoption agencies are commonly operating with their own interest in mind, leaving the children to suffer horrific circumstances.
In addition to the problems within LDCs, issues are also present within the legislation regarding international adoption. There is an extreme lack of regulation of intercountry adoptions and there are no requirements for countries to follow. Multiple acts encourage reform, but few countries actually implement them. There are optional conventions that are more restrictive than countries can apply, but if countries choose not to do so, the only regulations are that of the optimistic but unsuccessful act (Herrman, part C). In addition to this lack of legislation, the system of reporting unethical adoptions is also extremely dysfunctional. The Consular Section of the US Embassy has the power to approve or disapprove adoptions, but then this evaluation is sent to Homeland Security where nearly none of the adoptions are stopped (Cavell, 3). Similar to the authenticity of individual adoptions, the authenticity of adoption agencies also lacks regulation. The Council of Accreditation is meant to analyze the ethics of adoption agencies but fails to discredit all of the agencies that run through crime. Out of the 2,200 organizations “In 12 years of regulating international adoptions, the COA has canceled the accreditation of only 11 agencies and suspended 17” (Cavell, 3). The adoption system is very poorly regulated and requires much stronger action in order to conduct a system free of the horrendous crimes that strip children from their parents.
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Because of the lack of legislation regarding adoptions, many adoption agencies can get away with fraudulent adoptions by using unethical lawyers and cops. Often fraudulent adoptions will be handled by few lawyers that know of the means the adoption agency used to acquire the child, and they often get a portion of their profits. It is uncommon for only a few lawyers to handle so many cases, so when this occurs, it raises suspicion. DCI found that in Pichincha Italy “one lawyer handled 33 adoptions, and another, 16. Eleven other lawyers handled five or more” (Fiewager, 2). The investigation led them to a string of fraudulent adoptions. A similar case was found in Brazil, but much more dramatic. In Itaguaí, Brazil, 480 children were adopted, 200 of whom were international adoptions. Only one lawyer and one judge handled all of these cases which raised suspicion, but “the Human Rights Commission of the Legislative Assembly of Saõ Paulo and a commission of parliamentary inquiry of the Federal 226 A. Cardarello Senate produced two reports denouncing irregularities in the adoption procedures of the children of the families concerned. According to these reports, in more than one case, allegations of child abuse and abandonment have never been proven” (Cardarello, 2). The rare times that people are held responsible for the crimes committed in the adoption system lawyers are found guilty. In Parana, Brazil, “police arrested six people for child-trafficking. Of the six, three were lawyers, and one was a Civil Police Force support agent. They had been involved in the sale of children to couples all over Brazil” (Cardarello, 13). Corruption has leaked into the authority figures that are supposed to prevent crime, which makes these cruel crimes that much harder to stop.
Some involved with adoption agencies argue that there is not enough evidence of the crimes surrounding adoption, but this claim is purely a result of ignorance and their own financial gain. The presence of these crimes is not only defended by the evidence above, they also have been documented in various LDCs all over the world: “Numerous instances of corruption have been documented in Latin America, Romania, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Guatemala, as well as recent studies by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly demonstrate the prevalence of child trafficking crimes in European countries” (Hermann, part V). Along with the sufficient amount of evidence against this claim, a judge and a lawyer, who claimed they have full confidence in the adoption system, were found to have received suspicious payments from an adoption agency. Even after these payments were discovered “the judge responsible was acquitted of all accusations of irregularities by the Court of Justice of Sa˜o Paulo” (Cardarello, 4). The people who stunt the reform of the adoption system are merely ignoring the tragic crimes and keeping corruption trapped in the system.
Opponents of the reform of the international adoption system claim that children are being oppressed by the lack of adoption to foreign countries during reform, but, in reality, children are being hurt further in the adoption process. Adversaries believe the children should be brought out of their country of origin as efficiently as possible, but “Tailoring the international adoption process to maximize the amount of children adopted fails to consider the possibility that some of those children were not, in fact, 'orphans' in need of adoption, but rather they were wrongly taken from their homes through kidnapping, deceit or coercion” (Hermann, part V). Katherine Herrmann, an adoption lawyer in Arlington Virginia, believes: “Without protection, an orphaned child may actually suffer less than a child that is abused by the adoption process” (Herrmann, V). In addition to criminal activity surrounding the current system, this system also cannot regulate adoptions properly: “Illegal international adoptions are, by definition, beyond the reach of the law of either the sending or receiving country. Therefore, these adoptions are beyond the reach of agencies and institutions responsible for assuring the fitness of the adoptive parents and the well-being of the adopted children” (Fieweger, 3). Because of this, reform of the system is necessary for a functional and safe international adoption system.
To maintain an ethical intercountry adoption system, less developed countries need to create a stronger police presence to stop these crimes from being committed. Less developed countries lack the essential police presence to regulate just the crime within the country, let alone the crime outside of it. One woman in Uganda explained her experience just attempting to contact the police: “It takes an entire day, and costs a small fortune for Florence Babirye to get from her home in the Ugandan village of Kasolwe to Kayunga Police Station. First, there’s a motorbike taxi from the village to the nearest bus stop, then a bus to Kamuli town, a Nile crossing by ferry, and a long walk” (Cavell, 2). Police are currently inaccessible to the public in LDCs and are detached from the crime occurring around them, which allows people to commit crimes without consequences. The Development Policy Review of 2016 reported on a study that focused on twenty-seven different developing countries and concluded that “increasing police presence forces criminals to change from serious crimes to undertaking less serious crimes” (Islam, 2). Greater police presence would deter criminals from committing larger crimes such as kidnapping and fraud, and reduce their crimes to petty theft. If adoption agencies can no longer use unethical means to acquire children, then this corruption will no longer be able to leak to the higher-ups involved with international adoptions.
A moral international adoption system also requires better legislation, not tainted by corruption. Currently, the US protects people from severe forms of trafficking through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, but international adoption crimes are not included in this; “This inclusion could serve as the foundation for further legislation, offering protection from exploitation to an even greater number of children” (Hermann, part B). In addition to a policy change within the US government, policies for adoption agencies should also be altered. Adoption agencies should be required to do more thorough documentation of each adoption, as it “would assist the Department of Homeland Security with initiating more effective investigations of potentially corrupt activity” (Herrman, part B). In addition to these policies, the Hague Adoption Convention should be enforced in all countries. The convention covers all steps of the adoption process: “It seeks to prevent child selling and ensure that parents have made their decisions freely and without undue pressure, and it requires the receiving state to vet any potential adoptive parents to ensure that they are eligible and suitable to adopt a child” (Youde, 14). Taking all three of these actions creates an airtight system that will have zero tolerance for corruption.
The current state of the international adoption system is unacceptable and is greatly in need of reform. Adoption agencies are exploiting the demand for adopted children in more developed countries by taking children by unethical means from their homes in developing countries and using the profits for their own financial gain rather than the well-being of the orphans. There is not enough regulation of the adoption system, which allows for appalling crimes like kidnapping and fraud to take place. To solve these issues, there has to be an effort internationally to create new legislation for all parties involved, as well as a stronger police presence to prevent crimes from being committed in less developed countries and allow for a strong, safe, and moral international adoption system. In conclusion, that picturesque American couple is not necessarily saving a child from a life of deprivation but rather fueling the crime and corruption within the current immoral system.
Works Cited
- Cavell, Anna. “Those Kids Are No Longer Yours”. Nation, vol. 307, no. 11, Nov. 2018, pp. 12–17.
- Cardarello, Andrea. “The Right to Have a Family: ‘Legal Trafficking of Children’, Adoption and Birth Control in Brazil”. Anthropology & Medicine, vol. 19, no. 2, Aug. 2012, pp. 225–240.
- Fieweger, Mary Ellen. “Stolen Children and International Adoptions”. Child Welfare, vol. 70, no. 2, Mar. 2008, pp. 285–291.
- Guatemala| Adoption| Gender & Justice Project| Schuster Institute| Brandeis University.” Brandeis.Edu, 2009.
- Herrmann, Katherine. “Reestablishing the Humanitarian Approach to Adoption: The Legal and Social Change Necessary to End the Commodification of Children”. Family Law Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3, Fall 2010, pp. 409–428.
- Islam, Asif. “An Exploration of the Relationship Between Police Presence, Crime and Firms in Developing Countries”. Development Policy Review, vol. 34, no. 5, Sept. 2016, pp. 691–719.
- Youde, Jeremy. “Shame, Ontological Insecurity and Intercountry Adoption”. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 27, no. 3, Sept. 2014, pp. 424–441.
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