Domestic Adoption Issues in Nepal

This article addresses some of the corruption issues in international adoption from Nepal, leading to a decline of international adoption, and then proposes that Nepal should work to increase domestic adoption:

What the [Nepali government] should now consider is that if inter-country adoption is decreasing because of difficulty, an emphasis should be placed on domestic adoptions, which will be easier to handle. Nepal has a growing middle class and like any other country, there are couples aplenty that faced the burden of infertility.

But for this, the Ministry needs first to address the social stigmas associated with adoption. As a matter of fact, biological children are preferred by Nepali couples so much so that more often than not, they’d rather live without children, or go for surrogacy and test tube babies, rather than opt for adoption.

Apart from the social stigma associated with adoption, legal difficulty has been the other main hindrance in facilitating domestic adoption too. For instance, prospective adoptive parents are asked to furnish medical reports certifying infertility, marriage certificate, details of family property, parental income sources, copies of citizenships and a list of other documents.

To many adoption hopefuls, it is not just a hassle but a mockery to have to register the domestic adoption case in respective District Land Revenue Offices, as though you are buying or selling a piece of land

The complication in the procedures speaks of the government’s negligence towards domestic adoption. Amid this chaos, adoptive parents may not only lose their confidence in the system and opt for an illegal channel.

A "mockery to have to register the domestic adoption case in respective District Land Revenue Offices, as though you are buying or selling a piece of land."  Indeed.  But this is also how adoption used to be accomplished in the U.S., through "adoption by deed."  The adoption deed was then filed in the property records. . . .