Adoption: at what cost?

A new report, from the Terre des hommes, a Swiss children's aid foundation, focusing on the responsibility of receiving countries to ensure ethical international adoption:

Focus has been given for many years on the practices of the countries of origin. They have been found to be too lax or too corrupt, and considered to be responsible for the downward slide in standards for intercountry adoption.

Now, in the time of globalization, when a child can be bought over the internet, or ever-increasing numbers of candidates seek to adopt in a context of risk, there is urgent need to focus on the co-responsibility of the receiving countries.

In this publication, Terre des hommes – child relief (Tdh), under a mandate by Terre des Hommes International Federation (TDHIF), shows how the receiving
countries also have a certain responsibility. With procedures and legislation which have little, if any, respect to the interests of the child, and policies which tend to respond to the demands of adopting couples or put pressure on the countries of origin in order to obtain children, the receiving countries do not respect the engagements they undertook by ratifying the Hague Convention on international adoption.

The report looks as receiving European countries, but it is still quite applicable to the U.S. as a receiving country.