Statistics suggest that 143 million orphans exist around the globe. Presumably these orphans need homes and international adoption is the way to do it. A lesser known statistic is that many of these children are older, beyond the desired age for adopting, and have parents that could conceivably care for them with some assistance. Regardless, pro-international adoption agencies and scholars such as Harvard Professor Elizabeth Bartholet use such statistics to set up “orphan babies” as a worldwide problem and international adoption as the answer. Adoption activist Mirah Riben rethinks this number, and explores how support for international adoption can lead otherwise well-meaning agencies not to support other possibilities, such as state welfare services.
EDITORIAL Who are the 143 Million Orphans?
By Mirah Riben
February/March 2010 CONDUCIVE
False Statistics
Alexandria Yuster, a senior advisor on child protection with UNICEF argues that international adoption is now more about finding children for first world parents than finding homes for children. Yuster also warns us that the institutionalization of international adoption has become so commercial that it makes children vulnerable to trafficking.
Yet pro-adoption practitioners, lobbying, and marketing firms use questionable statistics on the number of global “orphans”. The National Council for Adoption (NCFA), ACT for Adoption, The Center for Adoption Policy (CAP), and the Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program (CAP), and the Joint Council on International Children’s Services repeatedly quote a figure of 143 million orphans. But as much as 88.7% of children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans but have at last one living parent and are not eligible for adoption according to a joint report by UNICEF, USAID, and The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
Many families in underdeveloped areas of the world use institutional care temporarily to give their children education and medical care they cannot otherwise afford. Orphanages can function like a subsidized boarding school complete with weekly Sunday dinners where parents can come to the orphanage to visit their children, eat their family dinner, and even worship with their children. Both of Madonna’s adoptions—supported by ACT—are explicit examples of children in temporary care at orphanages, many of whom have extended families that could care for them, if provided with the support to do so, according to a Holt International Children’s Services report for USAID.
Nearly 90% of the 143 million children residing in orphanages not eligible for adoption, for reasons of age or the fact that their parents have not consented to their adoption, leaves slightly less than 1.4 million children available. It is also known, however, that 95% of all institutionalized children are over five years of age, and many have special needs. U.S. visa statistics validate that almost 90% percent of all American adoptions are for children under the age of 5, not the children “languishing” in orphanages. The breakdown for international adoptee children is 46% are under a year; 43% are one to four years; 8% are five to nine years; and only 3% are over nine. The international adoptions are not helping the older children who need it the most. Most children in care in Cambodia, for instance, were over the age of eight.
For some countries adoption is so geared to the international market that potential parents located in the same country are unable to adopt because of the insurmountable competition of outside dollars. Adoptees mourning heritage and homeland is a common theme, and encouraging in-country over international adoption could help alleviate the loss accompanying exile from one’s birth country.
Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who is affiliated with ACT for Adoption, The Center for Adoption Policy (CAP), and the Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program (CAP) has publicly said “(homeland) heritage is over-rated.” She also preferred the phrase “baby selling” to child trafficking for adoption. In an article intended for print in Global Policy, Issue 1, January, 2010, Bartholet posts:
“International adoption is under siege, with the number of children placed dropping each of the last several years, and many countries imposing severe new restrictions [against kidnapping, stealing and corruption]. Key forces mounting the attack claim the child human rights mantle, arguing that such adoption denies heritage rights, and often involves abusive practices. Many nations assert rights to hold onto the children born within their borders, and others support these demands citing subsidiarity principles. But children’s most basic human rights, at the heart of the true meaning of subsidiarity, are to grow up in the families that will often be found only in international adoption. These rights should trump any conflicting state sovereignty claims” [emphasis added].
Only international adoption can provide needy children with caring families?
Those promoting and encouraging the adoption of children allegedly “languishing” in orphanages, and bemoaning any reduction in the number of Americans adopting internationally at the same time defends allow defend foreigners to adopt American children.
The buying and selling of human beings, including babies, is unlawful in every state in the United States and most of the world. It is reprehensible that an attorney, and one in the field of child adoption, makes such a grotesque statement defending baby buying. Like much fanatically pro-adoption claims this one is based on intentionally misinterpreted facts and statistics.
Disagreement
Not all attorneys in the field of adoption agree with such extreme positions. Profesor Bartholet has been taken to task by her own colleagues in regards to this issue of the number of orphans needing adoption as well as other facts about international adoption. Johanna Oreskovic, who holds a J.D. from the University at Buffalo Law School, where she taught a course on domestic and international adoption, and Trish Maskew, a consultant to the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, concluded:
“Bartholet’s argument is a factually unsupported, analytically simplistic justification for what is, in reality, the profoundly problematic institution of international adoption. She does not address any of the complexities involved in determining the true number of adoptable children. She offers no analysis or evidence in support of her claim that existing laws provide an effective safety net against abuse. She underestimates, perhaps radically, the true incidence of adoption abuses… It is irresponsible to begin the analysis, as Bartholet does, by looking at the end of the international adoption process…”
Adam Pertman, Exec. Dir., EBDAI in Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America (pp 193, 195) asks:
“Why aren’t adoption professionals screaming bloody murder…distancing themselves from … their unethical colleagues?
“. . .The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys as well as individual lawyers, should be holding press conferences and passing resolutions and demanding disbarment hearings, for example, when colleagues engage in egregious behavior…”
Conclusions
Viewing adoption from the perspective of those demanding babies and those wanting to profit from placements, the pro-adoption lobby sees the position of UNICEF and other child advocacy NGOs who offer alternatives to international adoption [such as] support for poor parents, foster care, and in-country adoption as “barriers to adoption.” For them, concern for those seeking to adopt——into and out of the U.S.—outstrips concern for anything else, leading to the downplay and defense of known abuses and illegalities. Baby buying, selling, and trafficking for adoption is illegal, repugnant, and immoral. Around the world, rings of thieves steal babies (some at gunpoint, some by drugging mothers), falsify documents declaring children abandoned, and sell them to orphanages, victimizing mothers and commodifying their children in commission of violent felony offenses.
Those planning to adopt need to exercise due diligence to be certain they are not part of the problem, and need to know that the attorneys and other professionals they hire to assist them in their desire to adopt are equally vigilant against partaking in trafficking. No one wants to discover, as some like the director of Neatherland’s largest adoption agency, Ina Hut, that the child adoptions they handled were obtained illegally or unethically, and in fact many are “calling for more transparency, because no parent would want a stolen child”.
Support of baby buying as something acceptable is sending shock waves throughout the adoption community. Adoption practitioners concerned about their own reputations and referral business need to clearly distance themselves from this position and stand with groups such as Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform (PEAR), EBDAI, and Ethica to maintain adoption as an ethical process with integrity and transparency.
To support adult adoptee and birth mother rights, consider purchasing a Conducive Humanitarian & Human Rights tee. Proceeds from tees will support an adult adoptee and birth mother organization. All tees are sweat free and available in organic cotton. To see the selection of Adoptee and Birth Mother tees at Conducive’s Humanitarian & Human Rights Tee store, click here
Mirah Ruben is the author of two internationally acclaimed books, shedding light …The Dark Side of Adoption (1988) and The Stork Market: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry (2007) and numerous articles. Riben is former Vice President of Communications of Origins-USA, a national non-profit that advocates for mothers’ rights and keeping natural families together.
Copyright ©2009 Conducive. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission from CONDUCIVEMAG.COM
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marketing children for infertiles has to be stopped at once for childless couples it should never be a service for them it has tostop so the children get to stay with their parents and their country of origin…..people who cant have kids were not meant to……tooo much money has been taken in buying children namely nicole kidman angelina jolie madonna and the list goes on buying children is not the way togo…….they havent done any of those children a favour by taking them from their country of origin……it was all about the money children should never be bought children are born and adoption for infertiles has to be banned outright across the globe
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