Intercountry adoption of children falls sharply
Rising costs and drop in poverty rate among reasons for decline
Up to the mid-2000s, intercountry adoption had grown into a popular way of caring for abandoned children. But in 2014, all 24 of the major receiving countries reported a 70 per cent drop in the number of adoptees over a 10-year period — a steep trend which continued in 2015.
The US remains the world’s largest intercountry adopting state, but while 23,000 children were adopted in the US in 2004, this figure had fallen to 5,000 in 2015.
This steep global decline raises questions. Are better alternatives available? Is it the result of fewer abandoned children globally?
An array of theories has emerged, ranging from rising costs and political tension to burgeoning bureaucracies that have made it more difficult for children to settle with a family.
Professor Peter Selman, a leading international adoption specialist and the man behind The Hague’s annual adoption statistics report, has been observing this phenomenon for a number of years and has identified two main trends: “Fewer children are being abandoned and domestic adoption is rising”.
Declining poverty and better child care systems
Poverty is a driving factor in a family’s decision to abandon their child. A rise in living standards in the past decade in some of the main countries that send children — China, Russia and South Korea to name a few — is a plausible explanation behind the decline.
The case of China is emblematic. It has been the largest origin of intercountry adoptees for the past decade. In 2005 alone, 15,000 Chinese children — mostly little girls, as a result of the one-child policy — were adopted by families from other countries. That figure then dropped to roughly 2,800 in 2014, an 80 per cent fall.
“China is in the process of creating a welfare system for children that really did not exist up until five years ago,” Chuck Johnson, president and chief executive of the National Council for Adoption told the FT.
“The system is still in its infancy but they are putting a lot of effort into it,” he added.
China is not alone. Domestic adoptions are rising in many Asian countries including Vietnam, the Philippines and India as well as in eastern Europe.
“Every country in the CEE/CIS region is — to a varying extent and with different levels of success — engaged in the reform of the child care system,” reads a UN report on childcare in eastern Europe.
Bulgaria, for example, with the help of major investments from the European Commission, is reforming the type of services it offers to communities, providing increasing support to vulnerable families as a way of preventing child abandonment. Hundreds of institutions have been closed as a result, particularly those for the very young. Meanwhile, the inadequate institutions for orphans and abandoned children that used to populate the Russian Federation have virtually disappeared, said Jean-Claude Legrand, an adviser on child protection at Unicef.
The UN estimates that the number of children in institutions dropped 74 per cent in Bulgaria in the 10 years to 2014, and was at least halved in one in three of the eastern European countries.
In Russia nearly two in three children in formal care are now either adopted, or in foster or guardian care compared with one in three in the 1990s, when the vast majority were in institutions.
However, Mr. Legrand warns that there is little improvement in reducing the abandonment of disabled children. A Unicef report confirms that “many people are still under the misapprehension that an institution is the best place for a disabled child”.
Nationalism a big factor
Chuck Johnson of the US-based National Council for Adoption, however, has a different view of the trend. Although there may have been a decline in abandoned children in China and a rise in those adopted domestically, “you are still looking at a country that a few years ago in the China Daily acknowledged that over 500,000 are in institutional care”, he says.
“The real elephant in the room is nationalism” says Mr Johnson. “No country really wants to release their own to another country even if they know they can’t take care of the child, even if it’s in the best interest of the child.”
He said Russia stopped intercountry adoptions to the US “for political reasons, not because of concerns over intercountry adoption”. The ban has been in place since January 2013 but a US state department report suggests that it is “evident there are many children in Russia who could benefit from intercountry adoption, and who remain institutionalised as a result.”
Complex story in Africa
At one time intercountry adoptions from African nations were rare. They rapidly increased as a result of “celebrity adoptions”, including American singer Madonna adopting two children from Malawi.
Intercountry adoption from Africa rose from 5 per cent of all intercountry adoptions in 2003 to 28 per cent in 2014. But many countries are now showing a reversal of the trend, including Ethiopia, by far the largest African country of origin.
“Adoption in western terms — a child is permanently removed from their family and community — does not exist, and it’s not understood in many African countries,” Prof Selman explains. “A lot of African countries believed that they [the children] would go to America, they would get an education, they would get rich and they would come back to help them.” When this did not happen, a revision of the adoption process began.
Rising complexities and costs
The most controversial issue is probably the role of the Hague Convention, an international agreement aimed at “protecting children and their families against the risks of illegal, irregular, premature or ill-prepared adoption abroad”. The risks are very real because the large sums of money involved attract unscrupulous individuals and make it difficult for governments to control the process.
Many countries, including Romania, Bulgaria and Guatemala, have stopped intercountry adoptions altogether while revising their processes or bringing them in line with the convention.
Critics believe that the rising complexities and costs of international adoptions as regulated by the Hague Convention are responsible for the decline in intercountry adoptions. “You are looking at a cost of about €30,000 for the whole process; not many people can afford that, especially in these economic conditions,” Roberta, an Italian parent-to-be, told the FT.
Adoption of healthy infants
“The US has observed that the profile of Chinese adoptees changed from 95 per cent healthy girls in 2005 to more than 90 per cent special needs children today,” says the US state department report.
China is taking its cue from Europe, according to a study by Prof Selman. Putting older children and those with special needs up for adoption has been “a feature of adoption in EU sending countries for some years”. In 2009, just half of Chinese adoptees had special needs, compared with more than 80 per cent of children sent by Latvia and Lithuania.
Outlook of intercountry adoptions
Will intercountry adoptions pick up again? The prognosis largely depends on which view one takes on the decline of intercountry adoption.
Mr Johnson believes international adoptions will pick up again in the US once processes are improved, but his view is at odds with Prof Selman’s verdict. For him the decline is largely the result of socio-economic changes in sending countries and a shift towards alternative forms of caring for children. “My feeling,” he says, “is that we have now 10 or 11 years of continuous decline and I don’t see that trend reversing.”
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