Big Changes in Ethiopia and

Is the fox guarding the hen house?

Already a program experiencing significant changes in the last year, Ethiopia has announced another dramatic step for their international adoption program (now the second most popular for US parents)

You can read the US state department announcement
Given MOWCYA's current caseload, the U.S. Embassy anticipates that this change could result in an overall decline in case processing of some 90 percent. If this change is implemented as proposed, we expect, that parents who have begun the process of adopting from Ethiopia but have not yet been matched with a child could experience significant delays. It is not clear if this change in procedures would have any significant impact on cases in which MOWCYA has already approved matches.

The corruption in Ethiopia has become irrefutable and is apparently far more wide spread than previously understood. In fact, there are only 4-5 agencies that are widely considered ethical and even several of those have at least one thing that could be improved to make the process more transparent.

In a nutshell here are the issues

1. Ethiopia has few restrictions on who is eligible to adopt

2. Ethiopia has a very poor populace who have limited access to resources (including education, medical care and employment)

3. Ethiopia is a relatively easy country for agencies to work in

4. Many long term IA countries are closed or closing (either officially or unofficially) For example, the continuing to grow wait times in China mean that many agencies are looking to find another sending counrty to replace their lost income from China adoptions. In fact many previously China-only agencies are opening programs in countries with questionable adoption practices and limited government (like Ethiopia)

5. The Ethiopian courts are unable to consistently identify children who have been kidnapped, trafficked or relinquished under false pretenses

6. There are many children who are parentless due to the AIDS epidemic, but those children are not the infant female as young as possible profile that most parents request. In fact, in many -if not most- infant adoptions the child has at least one living birth parent.

So when you take a birthfamily with little education and access to resources, in a country with little governmental infastructure and add to that cash strapped agencies looking to expand their adoption program while at the same time recognizing that not only are the majority of children who need families not the children prospective adoptive families are looking for but that they need to "find" infants who will fit the profile and you have a recipe for some of the abuses that have been seen in Ethiopia in the last several years.

So, and I acknowledge that I say this with the benefit of being finished with my adoption, if the government feels they have to make this drastic change to ensure their children are not being stolen away- well good for them. (and no one knows how this is going to play out -I mean if we have learned one thing recently in the US is that what government says it is going to do and what it does are often two very different things. Also no one knows yet which agencies will be effected or if they will all be effected equally.)

But then this popped up in my in-box and on multiple online forums. It is from JCICS (who is a group working to place children in families by specifically representing the interests of adoption agencies and adoptive families)

Don't get me wrong- they do some great work but in this case I think the fox is guarding the henhouse.

Here is the press release

Last week the Ethiopian Ministry of Women’s, Children's, and Youth Affairs announced their intention to reduce intercountry adoptions by 90% beginning March 10, 2011.
The Ministry’s plan for a dramatic reduction is apparently based on two primary issues;
1) the assumption that corruption in intercountry adoption is systemic and rampant and; (there is ongoing evidence that it is systemic)

2) the Ministry’s resources should be focused on the children for whom intercountry adoption is not an option.

(It seems to me that their focus should be on keeping children in the country and ideally with their families- It bothers me they say this as if it were a bad goal)

Here is the text of the petition they are circulating along with my comments

The Ministry’s plan to reduce intercountry adoption by 90% is a tragic, unnecessary and a disproportionate reaction to concerns of isolated abuses in the intercountry adoption process.

While I think that the 90% might be a larger number than necessary, the fact is that there are not isolated concerns. Ethiopia recently revoked the license of one of the worst offenders but the agency in the center of the "Fly Away Children" expose is still operating. Part, if not all, of the reason that the Ethiopian government now requires two trips is that so parents actually physically see the child prior to the court date that legalizes the adoption. Many agencies were misrepresenting the health and condition of the child in the referral data and parents were arriving in Ethiopia to find that the child they were the legal parent of had significant disabilities. Some of those parents were unable to bring the children home, leaving them in Ethiopia in a legal limbo. It happened enough to necessitate a program wide change in when parents meet the children. Doesn't sound like isolated abuses to me. I personally know the stories of at least 10 families (representing 9-10 different agencies) in which the children were told to lie, their information falsified and in some cases, their parents promised their children were only leaving to get an education or that their children would sponsor them to come to the US. And if I know 10 cases, there are many more not talked about due to gag clauses in agency contracts. It is not isolated.

We support the Ministry’s goal of ensuring ethical adoptions that serve the best interest of children and serve all vulnerable children & families.

I can't disagree with that except to say that adoption (even when ethical) is not always what is in the best interest in of the child and it is a flawed premise to assume that adoption is the solution for every child.

We respectfully urge the Ministry to consider the overwhelmingly positive, ethical and legal services provided to children and families through intercountry adoption. Rather than eliminate the right of Ethiopian children to a permanent family, we encourage the Ministry to accept the partnerships offered by governments, NGOs, and foundations.

Many of the partnerships that JCICS is talking about are run by the very adoption agencies in question. That's not to say that an agency can't do NGO work and adoption at the same time, but it muddies the ethical waters- particuarly if the NGO work involves birthing centers, or homes for pregnant women

Such partnerships could increase the Ministry’s capacity to regulate service providers, further ensure ethical adoptions and expand services to more families and children.

This is really the set up right now. Agencies run their NGO activities while also doing adoptions. Ethiopia requires agencies to do some kind of charitable program as a condition of working in Ethiopia. However, many agencies have started programs that make it easy to identify pregnant women and infants. The Ministry doesn't have the capacity to regulate service providers as things stand now, which is why they are taking these measures.

We, respectfully urge the Ministry of Women’s, Children's and Youth Affairs to reconsider its plan and to partner with governments, NGOs and foundations to achieve their goals and avoid the coming tragedy for children and families.

While I think that is unfortunate that the timing from referral to travel might lengthen to up to a year and while I think that making a child who is going to be adopted anyway wait for additional time is tragic, I also think that it is tragic that a birth family has lost their child(ren) through the overt actions of a corrupt agency. Yes, it is tragic that adoptive parents and children will have to wait longer it is far more tragic for a family to have lost their child through lack of support (via legitimate NGOs), through deception or outright kidnapping. And how can we look at our self in the mirror if we say our inconvenience is greater than their loss.

It has been said that adoption is a redemptive response to tragedy, but when that tragedy is created or exploited by unscrupulous agencies, there is nothing redemptive about it.