Amy Medina

Read this first:  Part 1:  The Evidence

I just couldn’t understand it.  Tanzania’s law is crystal clear:  You must be a resident for at least 3 years if you want to adopt a child.  I had worked directly with the social welfare department for ten years and they were never willing to compromise on the residency requirement.  So how could these U.S. agencies get away with opening an international program in this country, with families whisking in on tourist visas to pick up a child?

It was Uganda that made it click for me.  One day, I was searching the internet about international adoption, following links, and I found this about Uganda:

“The law governing adoptions in Uganda is…clear about the requirements for international adoption.

Section 46 (1)  A person who is not a citizen of Uganda may in exceptional circumstances adopt a Ugandan child, if he or she

(a) has stayed in Uganda for at least three years;

(b) has fostered the child for at least thirty-six months under the supervision of a probation and social welfare officer.”

Hmmm, I thought.  Sounds similar to Tanzania’s law.  In fact, it’s even tougher than Tanzania’s law, because Tanzania only requires a six-month foster care period.  So how are hundreds of American families adopting from Uganda?

I read on.

“Certain courts in Uganda can issue a ‘Legal Guardianship Order,’ which transfers parental rights of a child from one adult to another.  This was designed to cater for circumstances such as if a child’s parents can no longer provide for the child or if the child is at risk of abuse.  It is an instrument of law to protect a child at risk.  It was not designed to enable international adoption.

In 2013, 97% of adoptions from Uganda to the USA used this Loophole, ignoring the Ugandan Adoption Law.”

All of a sudden, it made sense to me.

The reason my concerns about Tanzania were being ignored is because American adoption agencies have been pulling these kind of shenanigans all over the world and getting away with it.  What they are trying to do in Tanzania is not an exception, it is the rule.  For many U.S. agencies, skirting around a country’s adoption laws has become common practice.

Why is that a big deal, you might ask, if it means children’s lives are being saved?

It’s a big deal because it’s encouraging corruption–and corruption always stifles economic growth and justice, especially for the poor.

And it’s a big deal because corruption in an adoption system inevitably leads to children being stolen or coerced from poor families.

So how did we get here?  Where did we go wrong?

Misunderstood Statistics

You’ve all probably seen the statistics:  150 million orphans worldwide.  Some even say 200 million orphans.

source

source

That’s a lot of children.  And it makes sense why compassionate Americans would recoil in horror at those statistics; why tens of thousands of people jump on the adoption bandwagon to save these children’s lives.  We imagine millions of babies and small children, languishing alone in orphanages, waiting for a Mommy to save them.

Except…..most of them already have a Mommy.

What?  But we thought they were orphans.

This is where definitions matter.  UNICEF defines an orphan as an child who has lost at least one parent.  150 million children have lost one parent.  The number of children who have lost both parents?  18 million.  Still a significant number, but far lower than 150 million.

The number of children living in orphanages worldwide?  Even smaller:  8 million.  And 4 out of 5 of those children have living, known parents.

This is what it means:  There are millions of vulnerable children in the world.  No question about that.  Many have lost a mother in childbirth or a father to war.  Their parents need help.  They need job training and opportunities.  They need addiction counseling.  They need the gospel.  But they don’t need their children to be adopted.

“The truth is the majority of the world’s orphans do not live in orphanages or on the streets–and only a tiny fraction of the world’s orphans need international adoption.”  (In Defense of the Fatherless, abbreviated throughout as DF)

YES–there are children in the world who need adoption.  As you will see in future posts this week, I am still an advocate for international adoption, because there still is a time and a place for it, and a way to do it right.  But what must change is the mindset that there are millions of children out there who need us to rescue them through adoption.  In reality, the number of children who need adoption is much smaller.  I will be discussing those implications in other posts.

The First Wrong Attitude:  The End Justifies the Means

I think sometimes we imagine 150 million children on a train heading for a cliff.  It’s up to us to save their lives….and that can only happen through adoption.  Adoption has been often been painted as the answer–and the only answer– to the orphan crisis.

“When Christians believe adoption is the answer to the global orphan crisis, some are willing to adopt at any cost.  Some believe so passionately in adoption that they are willing to justify all sorts of injustice–including coercing poor families, bribing government officials, trafficking children, or closing their eyes to corruption–in order to get a child home.”  (DF)

And this is where the misunderstood statistics lead agencies and families to the wrong conclusions.  If adoption is literally the only hope for 150 million children, then we should be willing to beg, bribe, and steal our way into saving their lives.  But if adoption is the only hope for just some of those children–and there’s other solutions for the vast majority of them–then we need to reconsider the means we are using to get to that end.

Another Wrong Attitude:  Ethnocentrism

“A child who has parents doesn’t need new, wealthier parents.”  (DF)

I’m looking deep inside myself here too, my friends.  International adoption is not always the result of ethnocentrism.  In fact, I think that international adoption, in many ways, can help us to fight our own ethnic prejudices in ourselves, our churches, and our communities.  It is a good and wonderful thing when racial walls are broken down through the love of a family.

But.

We must examine our hearts.  I look at the evidence.  I look at what is happening in Tanzania.  I look at what has happened, and is happening, in many countries around the world.  I see American agencies breaking the laws of other countries in order to make adoptions happen.  I see American agencies facilitating corruption in adoption by paying bribes.  I see them taking dangerous advantage of the lack of infrastructure.  In many cases, I do not believe that these agencies–or the families who trust them–are evil.  But I do think that many have an inherent belief that even if a child is snatched away from his parents, even if a mother was coerced into giving up her child–that the child is better off with an American family.  Why leave a child with a desperately poor mother in Africa when he can be given an education, Disneyland, and karate lessons in America?

This is ethnocentrism.  This is the belief that we as Americans know what’s best for the world’s children.  We justify breaking their laws because we believe we can take care of their children better than they can.

It’s ugly; it’s unbiblical; and it’s got to stop.

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I need to make it clear that I am not casting judgment on any parent who has adopted a child internationally.  Though our kids were adopted domestically in Tanzania, we were on the path to adopt a child from Ethiopia before our agency lost its license there.  We also had strongly considered adopting from Uganda or Congo, and we would have done it, had the way opened for us.  I never dreamed this kind of corruption was taking place, as I’m sure is the case for most adoptive parents.  Of course, many international adoptions are entirely ethical.  And if they were not, then I believe in God’s sovereignty and I trust in His redemption in making something beautiful out of something broken.  But as an adoption community, once we know more, we cannot ignore it.  We can’t let it continue. 

That said, I do believe that adoption corruption did not happen by accident.  Though I believe that (most of the time) adoptive parents are in the dark about these things, there are other parties who are not.  And that’s the focus of my next post:  U.S. adoption agencies’ role in international adoption corruption.

Continue reading:

Part 3:  The Horror That is Called Child Harvesting

Part 4:  Pure Religion is to Look After Orphans (and Widows?)

Part 5:  God Told Me To….Or Maybe He Didn’t

Part 6:  What About the Children Who Really Do Need Adoption?

Part 7:  Is There Hope in This Mess We’ve Made?

I never wanted to write about this.

I love adoption.  I love its redemption, how it takes something broken and turns it into something beautiful.  I love how it mirrors God’s pursuit of us.  Since the day we brought home our precious Grace ten years ago, I have been an adoption advocate.

I never wanted to write about the dark side of international adoption.  A year ago, I would never have believed that I would ever be doing a series like this.

Oh, I’ve heard inklings of corruption in international adoption during the last few years, but I always dismissed them as isolated instances.  In fact, if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I often wrote against those who were sounding the alarms.

For a long time, I refused to believe it.   But facts have always been extremely important to me.  When I was finally willing to really pay attention, my defenses came down under the mountain of evidence.  I simply could not ignore it.  Corruption in international adoption, especially in developing countries, is not rare.  That corruption leads to children being unnecessarily, commonly, separated from their families.  And that is a fact.

I’m going to be publishing seven posts in this series over the next two weeks.  A lot of what you read will turn your stomach.  You won’t want to believe it.  I didn’t either.  I’m only going to post a small fraction of what I’ve discovered.  It wasn’t very hard to find, but most of the time, Christians have been willingly ignoring it.  I believe it is absolutely crucial that the American adoption community, and especially those in the Christian community, come to grips with what is really going on.

I hope you’ll share these posts with international adoption advocates or those who are considering adoption.  I hope you’ll read through to the end, with an open mind.  I hope you will ask questions and engage me on this.

There’s some pretty nasty stuff in this broken world.  But thankfully, there is always hope.  Don’t worry; I’ll get to that part too.

Part 1:  The Evidence

Ukraine:  “In past years, the pressure to find children for lucrative foreign adoptions has led to scandals, including a baby-selling scheme in which Ukrainian mothers’ children were stolen after birth and offered for adoption as orphans.”  (The Child Catchers, by Kathryn Joyce, abbreviated throughout as CC)

Cambodia:  “After adoptions were suspended, the number of infants in orphanages plummeted almost immediately:  an indication to adoption reformers that the international adoption system and the revenue it generated was the only reason many babies had been placed in institutions.”  (CC)

Guatemala:  “From 1997 to 2007,  Americans adopted more than 30,000 children from Guatemala, which is widely considered to have had the most pervasive corruption in international adoption.  Large numbers of healthy infants were bought, coerced, or kidnapped away from their parents in order to be adopted overseas.” (In Defense of the Fatherless by Amanda Bennett and Sara Brinton, abbreviated throughout as DF)

More here on Guatemala.

“Some agencies accused of deeply unethical behavior in Guatemala are widely thought to have moved their operations to Ethiopia.”  (CC)

Ethiopia:  “A number of adoption agencies began requiring adoptive parents to sign waivers acknowledging that the information they received about their children might be inaccurate.” (CC)

“As country director, Tigabu claims, he witnessed children’s records changed so that they were adopted under false last names, thereby destroying their ability to track their heritage later.  Further, he said female employees of the agency were heavily pressured to give their own children up for adoption–children who were later declared ‘abandoned.'” (CC)

“90 percent of adoption cases [in Ethiopia] that went through the embassy required further investigation or clarification, often regarding misrepresentations or concealment of facts intended to expedite approval.”  (CC)

“Media reports in recent years alleging direct recruitment of children from birth parents by adoption service providers or their employees remain a serious concern for the Department of State.”  (DOS web page on Ethiopia)

Uganda:  Since [international adoption] set its sights on the the country in 2009, the number of orphanages has increased five-fold.  Approximately 95% of the 800+ orphanages now operating in Uganda are foreign-funded, yet only about 30 of them are licensed.  It is furthermore estimated that 85% of the children in Uganda’s childcare institutions have living and locatable relatives.  (source here)

One family’s story here.

Nepal:  “The government of Nepal charged an official fee of $300 for international adoption.  Adoption agencies instructed American parents to bring large amounts of cash into the country, though this was against Nepalese law.” (DF)

Vietnam:  “By 2008 when the United States shut down American adoptions from Vietnam, the State Department had discovered systematic corruption that resulted in the trafficking of children.  A network of adoption agency representatives, orphanages, police officers….were profiting through baby buying, coercing…and even stealing Vietnamese children to sell them to unsuspecting Americans.”  (DF)

Democratic Republic of Congo:  “[There are] reports of child trafficking, orphanage raids, and illegal border crossings…You have learned of falsification of documents….siblings split apart….false abandonment reports, coercion of birth parents to relinquish children, and high foster care fees without documented expenses (average of $500/month/child)…All of this information is publicly available, and all of it paints a very clear picture of endemic corruption and fraud in the international adoption business in DRC.”  (Holly Mulford, Reeds of Hope)

Liberia:  “The adoption fees represented a potential windfall….the number of orphanages jumped from around 10 before the war to between 114 and 120 after, and they began to find children to match adoptive parents’ desired gender and ages.  In 2006 Liberia, which then had only three million people, became the eighth-highest adoption-sending country in the world….The postwar government, functioning without electricity and internet, let alone sufficient numbers of trained staff, was unable to monitor children leaving the country.” (DF)

“All of these [countries, such as those listed above] had privately controlled adoption systems where adoption agencies and their representatives were involved in finding children for adoption and matching them with adoptive parents.  Families believed there was an overwhelming need for international adoption from these countries.  All of these countries were also known for quick, easy adoptions of healthy babies and toddlers.  In all of these countries, the numbers of children placed for adoption increased rapidly in response to the demand from adoptive parents.”  (DF)

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I have been naive.

I thought that by adopting four children from Tanzania, that I understood international adoption.

I did not.

We are not Tanzanian, but since we live in Tanzania, our adoptions are not considered international.  Our adoptions are domestic.  We never worked with an agency.  We worked directly with the government, and only at the very end did we hire a lawyer to finalize everything–similar to adopting out of foster care in the U.S.  Our only costs were for one U.S. report, and minimal lawyer fees.

The process, though long and frustrating, was free of anything dark or underhanded.  Instead, who I saw as dark and underhanded was UNICEF.  In 2009, UNICEF advised Tanzania in the writing of new adoption laws.  They took stringent requirements and made them more stringent.  Instead of just needing to be a resident of any length of time to adopt, now you need to be a resident for at least three years.

UNICEF became my enemy.  Had they seen all the children in orphanages in Tanzania?  How could they lack compassion?  How could they sit their in their ivory towers and prevent these children from finding homes?  I prayed for Tanzania to open an international adoption program.

Then, last June, my perspective changed almost overnight.  I discovered that American adoption agencies were attempting international adoptions in Tanzania.  I was appalled.  The law had not changed.  So how was this possible?  As much as I wanted international adoptions to happen in Tanzania, I certainly didn’t want them to happen illegally.

I wrote to the agencies, the embassies, the families, and anyone else I could think of, protesting these adoptions.  No one would listen, and no one even tried to offer me a defense.  No one seemed to care.  Why?  How could this even be happening?

Thus began my journey to find answers.  What I discovered was worse than I ever could have imagined.

“At the heart of this issue, we believe Christians are afraid to look at the truth.  We do not want to talk about corruption in adoption and orphan care because we fear what will happen to the orphans who are left behind….In the face of this fear, Christians are looking the other way or hoping that corruption is rare.”  (DF)

The corruption is not rare.  And we can no longer look the other way.

 

Continue reading:

Part 2:  Where Did We Go Wrong?

Part 3:  The Horror That is Called Child Harvesting

Part 4:  Pure Religion is to Look After Orphans (and Widows?)

Part 5:  God Told Me To….Or Maybe He Didn’t

Part 6:  What About the Children Who Really Do Need Adoption?

Part 7:  Is There Hope in This Mess We’ve Made?