Child Trafficking and International Adoption
Following the recent devastating earthquake, and concerned about the potential for child trafficking, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz ordered that all earthquake orphans be registered and taken into government care. None of them would be put up for adoption.
In a grotesque way, international child trafficking and international adoption seem to have much in common, but one is an evil disease and the other is a welcome cure. The legitimate international adoption system may, in rare instances, be the vehicle through which trafficking takes place. Despite our best ...
Lost in America
A young adopted Russian girl who appeared in a series of sexually explicit pictures taken at a Walt Disney World hotel was found and is now safe. Thirteen other Russian children adopted by American families over the past few years are not. They are dead. Though their numbers are small compared with the overall number of Russian Children adopted by Americans, the prevalence of their deaths within this sub-population of children, all due to child maltreatment by their adopted parent, is much higher than that for child abuse fatalities in the general American population.
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Federal Regulation of International Adoption
Introduction
It has been over ten years since the United States signed the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. It has been nearly seven years since the White House transmitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification. It has been four years since the Senate ratified the treaty and President Clinton signed the enabling legislation, the Intercountry Adoption Act (IAA) into law. It has been over three years since the State Department held a series of public meetings to elicit information to inform the process of writing implementing regulations.
International ...
Intercountry adoption: Who are the good guys?
The January 5, 2005 CNN headline read, “Trafficking a threat to tsunami orphans.” Within days after the tsunami hit, Indonesia had begun putting into place policies which prohibited any child under age 16 from leaving the country. Why? The Indonesian Embassy’s press secretary in Washington explained that “"the government would like to protect the children from potential traffickers.” It had cause for concern – estimates of children trafficked each year range from a half a million to four million.
Is this concern sufficient to interfere with legitimate ...
Adoptive Mother Abandons Children in Africa
In one of the more bizarre stories I've encountered, seven adopted American children, ages 8 to 17, were recently discovered in an African orphanage. The adoptive mother, Mercury Denise Liggins, had apparently left the children with a relative in Nigeria while she went to work for Haliburton in Iraq. After the children were discovered by a passing missionary, House Majority Speaker Tom DeLay, Senator John Cornyn and State Department officials intervened to return the children to Houston. The children, who were born and raised in Texas, were placed with Liggins by Houston ...