NYHOMESTUDY BLOG

INTRODUCTION

In 1993, the Hague Convention affirmed that intercountry adoption, when completed correctly, is a preferable alternative to institutional care. Unfortunately, implementation of this ground breaking treaty has not been focused on doing intercountry adoption the right way; Hague implementation has been about preventing intercountry adoption from happening at all. For children the treaty was supposed to protect, the results have been catastrophic.

That adoptions have ground to a virtual halt in Central and South America is evident from the statistics: Before 1993, the majority of non-Korean intercountry adoptions involved children from Central and South American countries, all of which (except Colombia) had adoption processes with significant private sector involvement.

Since 1993, with the inception of the Hague Treaty, Central and South American countries (with the notable exception of Guatemala) have all developed “Hague-compliant” legislation procedures that are unduly bureaucratic, underfunded, and have reduced the provision of adoption services to well under 50 children a year. This has occurred in countries where at least 50 % of the population lives in poverty, and there are little or no social welfare services to address the needs of families and children.
With or without intercountry adoption services, a significant number of children in developing countries do not have access to health care, education, or child protection services. Importantly, services to children and families have not significantly improved in any of the Central and South American countries that have all-but-eliminated, through “Hague-compliant” but nonfunctional processes, the opportunity for children to be adopted. Over the last 14 years, hundreds of thousands of children who might have benefited from the opportunity to grow to fulfill their human potential in permanent families have instead become statistics, adding to the numbers of children who are living in institutions or on the streets, dying prematurely, forced into slave and sex labor, neglected and abused in families of origin, and part of the vicious cycle of poverty.

Currently, the Guatemalan Executive Branch, UNICEF, the officials at the Hague Permanent Bureau, and the Department of State are all actively promoting the passage in Guatemala of the proposed Ortega Law, bill #3217, which mirrors the dysfunctional laws that have effectively stopped intercountry adoption in other Central and South American countries.

Such laws fail to provide prenatal services or access to the system, offer little or no funding for childcare, and lack adequate staffing and funding to promote efficient adoption services. Yes, these laws have stopped questionable adoption practices. But that’s only because they effectively eliminate almost all adoption services. Much more important is that these laws have failed to replace the necessary social services provided by the privately driven process.

Government and international organizational support for this type of “Hague-compliant” but nonfunctional law is exactly why ethical Guatemalan attorneys and adoption agencies resisted the Hague Treaty in Guatemala.

Focus On Adoption (FOA) supports functional Hague compliance. We believe in the standards of accountability called for in the Hague Treaty. But we also believe that adherence to narrow interpretations of the Treaty, with no concern for the practical impact of poor implementation of adoption services, has not helped the children the treaty is supposed to protect; it has hurt them by making them, and their suffering, invisible.

FOA supports a law proposal (Bill #3635) that would bring functional Hague compliance to Guatemala. Bill #3635 does this by regulating how children come into the “adoption system,” assuring adequate birthparent counseling, mandating transparent fee limits, funding good and professional pre-adoption and adoption services through accredited and supervised providers, and providing for supervised child care and medical care, accurate information, and an expedient complaint procedure. Yet the Department of State, UNICEF, and the Hague Permanent Bureau have virtually ignored Bill #3635. Why? Not because they have identified critical flaws in the bill. No, they ignore it, they say, because it was “written by the attorneys.”

It is time for the inflammatory rhetoric and demonization of private adoption service providers in Guatemala to stop! Bill #3635 addresses the problems in the current system, while maintaining a framework of public-private cooperation, which is the hallmark of the U.S. system as well. Controversy about past practices and practitioners, both in the U.S. and in Guatemala, should not be used as an excuse to ignore Bill #3635, as it provides a clear regulatory framework that upholds the standards and principles of the Hague Convention while providing clear consequences for those who fail to adhere to these standards.

If the Hague is to be considered “The Gold Standard” for intercountry adoption processing, then policy makers have an obligation to ensure that the Treaty is implemented to serve the population it is designed to protect and truly serve the best interests of the child. Bill #3635 does precisely this.

FOA calls on the Guatemalan government, the Hague Permanent Bureau, UNICEF, and the U.S. Department of State to support Bill #3635.

If you are interested in learning more about Bill #3635, please visit FOA’s website at www.focusonadoption.com and click on the link to FOA’s comprehensive analysis of Bill #3635.