Business of selling children in the garb of “Adoption”

goes on and it is hard to dismantle this

adoption-mafia which has come up in India.

Full article HERE

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.

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.

My first encounter with Arun was over Skype when he told me that I should not be feeling very proud of having been part of a Committee which drafted Bill for Indian Secular Adoption Law. Of course he was concerned that it also permitted inter-country adoptions without even understanding what it was. He hoped that this Bill could never see the day of light. At that point of time I felt miserable on being told so on my face but then onwards I kept on meeting Anjali, Arun’s India counterpart and listening to scary stories of children given into foreign adoptions from her made me have a rethink.

And now I have this book which gives me opportunity to look at “Foreign adoptions” in Romania. Same story there. Thankfully Romania got rid of it, closed down foreign adoptions completely but in India, it remains a debatable issue.

The very basic question which Anjali-Arun duo pose is “How Adoption is a Child Welfare Instrument?”. They ask me to think about it. I think and think a lot. I meet people and ask them about their opinion. Bharti, one of my teachers in my child rights work, says, “I am yet to see a family who went for adoption because they wanted to help a child. Each one of them tried to have their own child, went to doctors, took all medical measures and when failed, ended up in adoption”. So then what Anjali-Arun say makes a lot of sense. Adoption is not a measure to help a child who needs better care. It is about adults’ need to have a child. This book also says the same. Before I go ahead, let me just say something about this book and its author. Author is Roelie Post and this book is result of her diary which she kept during her work for the European Commission that aimed to help Romania reform its child protection. Romania needed to reform its child rights policy as one of the conditions for its future membership in EU. Book says that Roelie, during her work, found out that the inter-country adoption system in place was nothing short of a market for children, riddled with corruption.

Book tells us that after Romania redrafted its laws putting in modern child protection alternatives, a ferocious lobby that wants to maintain inter-country adoptions stepped out.

In India, this lobby is at best. No wonder when India’s Juvenile Justice Law was being amended, a clause which restricted adoption to Indian parents, got deleted just before it was notified in August 2006. The December -2005 report of Parliamentary Committee which examined the draft did not contain any comment in favour or against this clause. How it got deleted? I am trying to find out with no success so far. Then Bharti tells me that this happens all the time when anything is done on adoption. Things change without even one noticing or knowing about it at the very last moment. She tells me that when guidelines for regulating adoptions were being drafted, a consultation was called and inputs were taken. When the final guidelines came out, it contained provisions which were not suggested by anyone in the consultation. From where did those provisions come in? Lobby? I don’t know.

What I have come to know so far is that there are parents, extremely poor, living in villages and small towns of India, hoping that their children are getting educated somewhere in a foreign country, oblivious of the fact that they were made to sign adoption deeds in the name of education papers. They don’t know that their children are never going to return and that they will die in hope only. Anjali helps such people in finding their “Lost” children, conducts private investigations to expose culprits and approaches Courts to punish the culprits. Anjali tells that the fight is not easy and no one supports this kind of work. No charity or funding organisation comes ahead to financially support this work. She depends on individual help to sustain her work. Same is the story of Arun. He works as an insurance agent, earns money from that work, feeds his family and saves money to be able to come to India occasionally to do advocacy and meet people. When I met him just few days back at my house, he was in India for a short while on a similar visit. This time he met me and he wants me to do cases in Courts on this issue.

I am growing in understanding that everything done in the name of “Child Rights” is not always so. There is a market and money behind it. Charity is not always charity. There is a politics involved in it. “Compassion” is not always “Compassion”, there is “Need” and “Greed” involved in it. I hate knowing all this as it takes a toll on my zeal. I don’t want to be part of dirt. It disillusions me. But then I also know that it is better to know rather than not knowing as the later is dangerous. One may end up doing exactly the opposite of what one wanted to do.

Knowing all this gives me one more reason to be opposed to Foreign Funding. One may never know who is giving “donations” for what? What I see happening here in India is that by the time one knows, it is too late. One gets so complicit that it becomes impossible to just stand up and walk out. This is the evil involved in foreign funding. Or maybe it is just part of Globalisation where “good” or “bad” / “Right” or “Wrong” has to been seen and understood, not in domestic contexts but then “Is Internationalism not imposing domestics of powerful nations?

Writer is a lawyer specializing in children related laws and public interest litigation. He practices in Delhi High Court and can be contacted as anant.asthana@gmail.com.

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

Source

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.”

FULL REVIEW: HERE

Best interests of the child

However that knowledge did not make Post a fan of legalised intercountry adoption, because in her experience it so often failed to be in the best interests of the child, a key tenet of international child rights law codified by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Post’s book charts her time with the European Commission from 1999 until 2005, when she was charged to support Romania in its efforts to reform their child protection system. The book is part diary, part historical and political record, part personal blog, interwoven with lonely vignettes of childhoods seemingly stolen by intercountry adoption. Three stand out:
•The case of Romanian twins, who were abused by their adoptive father in Northern Ireland to the point one of the children died. The birth mother was not aware her twins had been adopted – they had been removed from her when she asked the authorities for milk powder.
•An adoptive mother on a plane to London held her baby’s face to the window and said “Say goodbye to Romania, bye-bye”. The child cried “mammi, mammi” for its Romanian carer, continuing until the adoptive father started banging his fists on the arm rests of his chair shouting at the baby “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
•A child sent overseas for adoption despite his Romanian foster parents being willing to adopt him. The child was happy and settled with his foster family and expressed his desire to remain with them. His views were ignored despite article 12 of the CRC which requires the views of the child be “given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child”.

The book’s most poignant testament is to the fact that so few people have the courage to stand up and fight for the justice they say they believe in. Not as an organisational representative giving key messages in press conferences, but as a lone individual bravely exposing the most corrupt of abuses against the most vulnerable members of society, saying “this is who I am, this is what I saw, this is what I know”. That individual is Roelie Post.

Post has now been seconded to Dutch NGO (non-governmental organisation) Against Child Trafficking, after repeated threats and harassment, documented in her book, made it impossible to remain working on child rights at the European Commission.

Political pressure

I imagine her work at ACT is a rather singular role, compared to the many-headed beast of her European Commission position. The book reveals how Post was constantly forced to navigate different political interests and choose personal vilification over accepting the interference of vested but powerful interests.

Post unashamedly charts the machinations of organisations and individuals working within the political, intergovernmental and NGO worlds in Romania at that time. In many cases Post directly names and exposes those who abused their positions to underplay the effectiveness of reforms to Romania’s child protection system and lobby for intercountry adoptions despite domestic alternatives for the children.

Post tells of Spanish parliamentarians lobbying on behalf of Spanish couples who had made a down payment for an as yet unidentified adoptable child, which “Romania needed to deliver”, and how pressure was applied by the US government in linking the reopening of adoptions by US citizens to NATO accession.

International law

Post also addresses the controversial role of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. Romania fully implemented the principles of the convention in 1997 legislation, with the result that intercountry adoption rates soared from a few hundred in 1998 to more than 3,000 adoptions in the year 2000, despite the fact that intercountry adoption should only be used as a measure of last resort.

Indeed article 21b[1] of the CRC places intercountry adoption after residential care and the Independent Panel of Family Law Experts of EU Member States produced a “Summary of opinion on the matter of adoptions” for Romania in 2004, stating that adoption should not be seen as a child special protection measure and that “it must be clear that residential care comes also before (intercountry) adoption”. Noting further that “especially with intercountry adoption, there is a risk that the institutions responsible for children may impose adoption in cases, which are unsuitable, so as to compensate for their own lack of resources”.

Post claims that one effect of the Hague Convention was that “more and more children were drawn into the child protection system, as being ‘abandoned’ ” with Hague certificates for each child legitimising what continued to be the exchange of children for financial gain.

Post concludes her book with a call to action to the new swathe of sending states: “The demand for children has moved to other vulnerable countries. I hope these countries will feel strong enough to follow Romania’s example and place the rights of their children first: the right to be protected and raised in their country; the right of their families to receive support and the obligation of the State to provide this.”

Romania For Export Only will go at least some way to making that vision a reality, by showing in vivid prose the price children pay when their best interests are placed below commercial ones.

Romania for Export Only is available to buy online at 22.90 Euro, with all proceeds to Against Child Trafficking. Visit: www.romania-forexportonly.eu/buy-the-book

ENDS.

[1] Save the Children: Keeping Children Out of Harmful Institutions: Why we should be investing in family-based care, November 2009 http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/online-library/keeping-children-out-of-harmful-institutions-why-we-should-be-investing-in-family-based-care

[2] Ibid

[3] http://www.atlantic-times.com/archive_detail.php?recordID=2113

[4] CRC Article 21(b) “Recognize that inter-country adoption may be considered as an alternative means of child’s care, if the child cannot be placed in a foster or an adoptive family or cannot in any suitable manner be cared for in the child’s country of origin”.

–

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.

On Wednesday the Romanian Parliament voted for changing the adoption law. I have not yet been able to finish reading all the amendments, but it is clear that this would be a start in opening the doors.

It is now up to President Basescu to sign this amendment.

Will he keep his word?

‘Anyone can lobby in Brussels or anywhere else, but Romania will not change its adoption legislation, at least not as long as I am the President’

Press conference – 22 April 2010 – of EC President José Manuel Barroso and Romanian President Traian Basescu:

Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 3:58 pm
Cable: Wikileaks
Ref: 06THEHAGUE617

VZCZCXRO8264
RR RUEHAG RUEHDF RUEHIK RUEHLZ
DE RUEHTC #0617 0811558
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 221558Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY THE HAGUE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5172
INFO RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE
RUEHBM/AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST 1111
RUEHSF/AMEMBASSY SOFIA 0418
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 2840
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS 0270

UNCLAS THE HAGUE 000617

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL CASC EU RO NL
SUBJECT: NETHERLANDS: PENDING ADOPTION CASES IN ROMANIA

REF: STATE 43700

1. (SBU) Poloff delivered reftel demarche March 21 to MFA
Western and Central Europe policy officer Mara van der Poel,
who handles accession issues for Romania and Bulgaria. The
GONL is satisfied with the Romanian adoption law, which it
believes (despite our arguments) is in conformity with
international and EU conventions. Van der Poel cited
European Commission reports that indicated Romania had the
capacity to adopt needy children internally. Regarding
pending cases, she said that the GONL was satisfied with the
European Commission’s call for the Romanian government to
inform applicants of the status of their cases.

2. (SBU) When pressed by poloff, van der Poel said that,
frankly, the Romanian accession process faces hurdles which
are far more pressing that the adoption issue (for example,
corruption). She said that the GONL does not feel this is an
issue on which the Romanians should be distracted.
ARNALL

In my book Romania for Export Only I mentioned the letter sent by then US Deputy Secetary of State Richard Armitage to European Commissioner Gunter Verheugen.

Tuesday, 4 May 2004

A letter from US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Commissioner Verheugen. This man had already been quoted some weeks ago in an article in the Herald Tribune, with as headline:

‘ROMANIA: LET YOUR CHILDREN GO’

In his letter to Verheugen, Armitage now spoke of ‘common interest of the EU and the US in reform of child protection and adoption’. He proposed to form ‘a joint front to clarify with the Romanian PM that the EU does not ask for a ban on adoptions’.

Wikileaks published the cable with the reply of the European Commission.

And as you will see, no EU/US joint front:

Source: http://wikileaks.org

Viewing cable 04BRUSSELS2496, VERHEUGEN RESPONSE TO DEPUTY SECRETARY ON ROMANIAN

If you are new to these pages, please read an introduction on the structure of a cable as well as how to discuss them with others. See also the FAQs

Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin

04BRUSSELS2496 2004-06-10 12:56 2011-08-30 01:44 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Brussels

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

101256Z Jun 04

C O N F I D E N T I A L BRUSSELS 002496

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/10/2014

TAGS: PREL CASC CVIS RO EUN USEU BRUSSELS

SUBJECT: VERHEUGEN RESPONSE TO DEPUTY SECRETARY ON ROMANIAN

ADOPTIONS

Classified By: Rick Holtzapple, PolOff, Reason 1.4 B/D

¶1. (U) The cabinet of Enlargement Commissioner Gunter

Verheugen has faxed us a letter from the Commissioner to

Deputy Secretary Armitage, replying to the Deputy Secretary’s

letter of May 4 on the issue of Romanian adoptions. The full

text of the letter is in para 3 below, and a copy of the

original fax with signature has been faxed to EUR/ERA and

Embassy Bucharest.

¶2. (C) The letter confirms what we already know from the copy

of the report from the Commission to the GoR on the issue

that was provided to Embassy Bucharest. The Commission’s

legal experts have told the Romanian government that the

“proposed approach to pursue on the policy of intercountry

adoptions with a very limited exception” is seen as

“essentially in line” with the EU’s demands.

¶3. (U) Beginning of Text:

Dear Mr. Secretary of State,

Thank you for your letter of 4 May 2004 on the issue of

intercountry adoptions from Romania.

I would like to clarify that the European Commission is not

against intercountry adoption as such. However, the UN

Convention on the Rights of the Child foresees that

inter-country adoption may be considered only if the child

cannot be placed in a foster or an adoptive family or cannot

in any suitable manner be cared for in the child’s country of

origin. This “last resort” provision is consonant with the

provision in the UN convention that refers to the

“desirability of continuity in a child’s upbringing and to

the child’s ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic

background.”

All Member States of the EU have ratified the UN Convention

on the Rights of the Child and therefore should respect the

above mentioned principles. Therefore the Commission

considers that the moratorium on intercountry adoptions is

necessary as long as no legislation is in force that fully

complies with this convention, and as long as no

administrative capacity exists to implement this legislation.

Following Prime Minister Nastase’s request for legal advice

on children’s rights and adoption, the Commission set up an

Independent Panel of EU Member State experts on family law.

In its latest report, which I have forwarded to Prime

Minister Nastase, the Panel noted the fundamental change made

by Romania on the issue of intercountry adoption. The

proposed approach to pursue on the policy of intercountry

adoptions with a very limited exception was considered

essentially in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of

the Child.

Our primordial focus must be on getting the system of child

care in Romania right so that we get tot he usual situation

in the Member States of the EU where international adoptions

are the exception. Therefore, the EU has supported Romania

in its efforts to improve the quality of public care for

children. This meant that large residential establishments

were closed down and replaced with a selection of child

protection alternatives ranging from smaller homes and foster

care to day-care centres. Of course there remains work to be

done, but Romania surely has come a long way in resolving the

issue of children in public care.

I have been informed that recently a videoconference on this

issue was held between the Washington State Department and my

services, and that it was considered useful to have both

sides express their respective positions.

Yours sincerely,

/S/