Profit, Not Care: The Ugly Side of Overseas Adoptions

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/05-1

Lax regulation and an endless demand by childless couples in the West has created an often exploitative market in babies born in the developing world

In rural Nepal, where the going rate for a healthy orphan is $5,000 (£3,000), some 600 children are missing. They were taken by agents who came to the villages promising that they would educate the children and give them a better life in the capital, sometimes for a steep fee. The children never returned.

Between 2001 and 2007, hundreds of Nepali children with living parents were falsely listed as orphans and adopted by high-paying Westerners thousands of miles away. One widow, according to the child protection charity Terre des Hommes, was unable to feed her seven children and sent them to an urban "child center", where three were quickly adopted without her consent by rich Westerners. Another, Sunita, was told by sneering authorities that she would never see her child again. She doused herself in kerosene and struck a match.

Tens of thousands of babies, toddlers and young children are now adopted across international borders every year, according to UNICEF. There has been a decline since 2004, but in 2009, the last year for which reliable figures are available, the top five adopting countries alone took in 24,839 children from overseas. Half of these, some 12,753, went to the US, with Italy taking 3,964, Spain and France around 3,000 each, and Canada 2,122. Britain, where very strict rules apply, has very few overseas adoptions.

More at the link --

[Ilsa]

1. Thank you for this article. I am amazed

by how selfish some people are, adopting children to suit their own needs, not the needs of the children, not bothering to determine if it is truly a needed adoption, and enriching baby traders.

[Name removed]

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