I just finished reading Roelie Post‘s book, Romania for Export Only: the Untold Story of Romanian ‘Orphans’.
By reading this book, I’ve learned how the lobby of adoption agencies and NGO are vicious and ferocious.
It doesn’t surprise anymore what’s happening in Korea right now.
This book is a must read. If you think inter-country adoption is necessary to save the abandoned/’orphans’, please read this book.
Source: Tehelka Foundation
A personal Inquiry
by Anant Asthana on Thursday, November 1, 2012
Me: I don’t understand you guys’ opposition to inter-country adoption. You are extremists.
Arun: Anjali! Give that book to Anant.
Anjali: But I have brought that book for registrar.
Arun: No, give it to him. It makes more sense to give it to him than registrar.
Anjali: Ok
So that’s how I got hold of this book called ” The Untold story of the Romanian ‘orphans’ ” which carries a tag in bold ” FOR EXPORT ONLY”. Anjali is a friend of mine, based in Pune, Maharashtra and works exposing the dark side of foreign adoptions (inter-country adoptions). Arun is from Germany where he was given into adoption from India when he was a child. Exposing the cruel side of inter-country adoptions is something very personal to him, having been a survivor of it. Their tireless campaigning on this issue is inspirational and their anger is provocative. (more…)
Roelie Post’s account is an insider perspective that is all the more valid coming from someone whose work and very position required a non-resistant stance against the international trafficking of children that we euphemistically refer to as adoption.
Chronicling eight years of work for the European Commission, this book documents the systemic nature that sees adoption as simply another means for profiting from such trafficking. Most interesting perhaps is the nation-state of Romania, moving from its “outsider” position to a member of the European Union, and claiming that as such it should not be an “exporter” of children, like the other esteemed members of the Union. Here we see the EU as an exploiter supreme on the level of international politics, with this exploitation manifesting itself in the exportation of Romanian children.
A sobering account in diary form that gives the lie to any notion of “humanism” where adoption is concerned. Highly recommended; all proceeds go to ACT (Against Child Trafficking). —Daniel Ibn Zayd
Book Review: Romania For Export Only, The untold story of the Romanian “orphans” by Roelie Post
In 2001, I worked on a European Union project euphemistically titled “Public Awareness Campaign to Prevent the Abandonment of Children in Romania”. I say euphemistically because it was in essence an anti-child trafficking project. Orphanages, where abandoned children ended up, were the equivalent of clearing houses in a supply chain of goods, the goods in this case being orphaned and abandoned children sold overseas.
While in Romania, I worked with Roelie Post (pictured), whose book Romania For Export Only I have just read. The book narrates the story of how a country reliant on the institutional care of vulnerable children transitions to alternative progressive measures such as family reunification, domestic adoption, family type homes and foster care. All the time running to stay ahead of the intercountry adoption lobby, which is focussed solely on the removal of children from their country of origin. This lobby continued long after Romania imposed a moratorium on intercountry adoptions in response to widespread abuses in the adoption system.
Most of the children concerned were not orphans. According to a Save the Children report[1], over 80% of children in orphanages around the world have a living parent and most are there because their parents cannot afford to feed, clothe and educate them.
Romania is no different: “We took them [to an institution] for the winter because we couldn’t afford to feed them. When we came to collect them, we were told they had gone,” said a Romanian father in 2000, talking about the intercountry adoption of his children[2].
Post is at pains to point out that in Romania, as in other poor or less developed countries, placement of children in protection services is not the same as abandoning them. Post comments “there is no intentional ‘abandonment’ of the children, but merely a combination of factors that led to the separation of the child from its family”. Lack of identity papers for example was cited as a hindrance to taking newborns home from maternity hospitals.
Romania proved to be hosting an orphan creation industry, netting an estimated $900 million in 10 years[3], a pattern now set to repeat itself in Africa, dubbed the new frontier for intercountry adoption.
Trafficking of children
The book confronts the fact that Romanian children were not only the subject of adoption for couples in wealthier countries, but were also allegedly trafficked for their body parts for use in organ transplants, and for paedophiles. Likewise the babies of women sold into prostitution “the mistakes of their profession” were trafficked by criminal gangs.
Post comments: “It is most likely not without reason that Europol’s (the European law enforcement agency) definition of child abuse refers not only to sexual abuse, prostitution, forced labour, kidnapping, parental abduction, ritual killing and illegal adoption, but also to the trade in abandoned children and the trade in organs.”
Roelie Post’s book, Romania for Export Only: the Untold Story of the Romanian ‘Orphans’, exposes the formation of an unjust legalized system called inter-country adoption, in which children are taken from their families and sent to foreigners. By reading the book, I was given insights into how adoption lobbyists forcefully and subtly manipulate their agenda into countries—one country at a time. This particular book focuses on Romania. The author does not tell the reader what to believe, but rather we get to form our own opinion as we follow her experiences in the effort to protect the Romanian children between 1999 and 2006.
Roelie writes the book in a diary format, which starts on the first day of her new position for the European Commission. Diary entries document and demonstrate how the adoption lobbyists infiltrated Romania, and as a result –just like in Asia and now in parts of Africa– created a “child protection” mess that Human Rights Activists and adult adopted people are currently trying to clean up. Her book is informative, suspenseful and shines light on the adoption corruption that has intentionally been kept hidden from the mainstream.
Because I was labeled an “orphan” by an American-owned adoption agency and then sent overseas in 1972, I am motivated to investigate inter-country adoption’s underworld. I am able to recognize how Roelie’s attempt to protect the Romanian children correlates with my attempt to find my Korean family. The diary entries confirm the feelings I’ve had as an adult adoptee, but have been unacknowledged and resisted by those who profit from the industry. I applaud Roelie for having the courage to detail her time, working on Romania’s child protection efforts.
After researching adoption and participating in adult adoptee groups and discussions for years, I have watched the concerned voices of adult adoptees be ignored, demeaned, insulted and attacked by zealous adoption lobbyists and facilitators. In the global effort to “save” children under the veneer of love and protection, inter-country adoption has exploded into an operation that finds homes for children who already have families. It is not about the abandonment of children, but shaming and deserting vulnerable mothers, fathers, family units and communities.
By the time I had finished Romania for Export Only, Roelie had earned my respect. I admire the author’s empathy for the children and her ability to stay focused and tenacious throughout the story–especially when faced with adversaries. Readers will understand how challenging it was for the Romanian Team to protect the children against an intentional, strategic and determined force. We all know that when history is ignored, it is bound to repeat itself. And it has. Adoption profiteers have spanned its web into every continent on earth. Let us not ignore this account.
Today Roelie Post runs an organization called ACT (www.againstchildtrafficking.org). This organization is vital in the movement to protect the family and recognize the crimes committed. ACT promotes the UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child), which first and foremost gives children the right to be cared for by their families and to stay within their original communities. In order to end inter-country adoption abuses—also deemed “glorified” child-trafficking by many adult adopted people and survivors—we must follow the money and hold the guilty accountable. Governments are being deceived. Families are being coerced and manipulated. Child trafficking is a crime. It is time for the voice of the severed families and our advocates to be heard. It is time to take action.
Romania for Export Only: the Untold Story of the Romanian ‘Orphans’ is a must read.
The travesty that was Romanian adoption is not going to be repeated, at least for now, despite the machinations of the adoption industry. I am reading Roelie Post’s book on the Romanian adoptee debacle of the late 1980s and 1990s and this is most certainly a victory for children.
Tonight I got a phonecall from someone who had just finnished reading my book.
‘Reads like a thriller’, she said.
And she was curious about the follow-up. Will there be a happy ending?
That remains to be seen…
A bit of follow-up can already be seen at
Search a Chil, Pay Cash, the Adoption Lobby (September 2009):
http://www.romania-forexportonly.eu/2009/09/suche-kind-zahle-bar/
First of all I wanted to congratulate you on your book that I just finished. I found it fascinating and impressive. At times I thought I was reading a novella… Thank you, I’ve seen the otherside of the story of adoption in Romania. I started to get interested in adoption in 1999 and had no Internet access to almost 2001. It was very enlightening.
Right now I heard the news on television. In Spain there are 34,000 homeless children in schools. Obviously these are not adoptable, the birth parents have not lost custody and is verydifficult to adopt. How ironic right?
The Spanish are going to all nations to adopt children and have 34,000 in our juvenile facilities.
Ireland is going to visit the U.S. to look into the possibility to take American children?
The world upside down.
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Antes de nada quería felicitarle por su libro que acabo de terminar. Me ha resultado fascinante e impresionante. En algunos momentos me parecía que estaba leyendo una novela…Muchas gracias, he visto la otra versión de la historia de la adopción en Rumania. Yo empecé a interesarme por la adopción en 1999 y no tuve acceso a Internet hasta casi 2001. Ha sido muy esclarecedor.
Ahora mismo he escuchado las noticias en la televisión. En España hay 34.000 menores desamparados en centros. Evidentemente no son adoptable, los padres biológicos no han perdido la patria potestad y resulta muy dificil adoptarlos. Qué ironía verdad?
Los españoles vamos a todos los países del mundo a adoptar niños y tenemos 34.000 en nuestros centros de menores.
Irlanda se va de visita a EEUU para ver las posibilidads de adoptar menores estadounidenses?
El mundo al revés.
A DRAMATIC, AND SOMETIMES INCONVENIENT TRUTH…, but it is an x-ray about the realities Romania faced all this tragic decade.
Roelie Post allows the reader a unique insiders view regarding the politics of international adoption. It was an eye-opening account that not many are willing to share to the outside world.In her experience with Romania’s orphan care and international adoption program, Ms. Post begins her journey as many do (innocent) and as her knowledge about the politics behind international adoption grows– revelations on the real truth behind the industry of international adoption becomes quite clear.
Never again can I look at the “black and white” pictures of the “poor orphans” that rely on us to “save” them with the same naïve eyes. This book offers amazing parallels into other international programs– including China. Ms. Post talks about the points system, safe-haven drops, attachment studies on orphans, media attention and the pressure from outside countries and NGO’s to gain access to Romania’s children… all of which are familiar themes in many IA programs.While it was heart-warming to know that there are many people who work very hard to preserve children’s rights, it is equally scary to understand the underlying situation that most will never get to see.This is a must-read book for anyone entering into the world of international adoption.
