THE CIRCUMSTANCES under which children in Vietnam become “adoptable” are “unclear and disturbing”, according to a report from Unicef.
The report is also critical of the Irish adoption agency, Helping Hands, for failing to inform the Irish Adoption Board that a recent increase in fees was in fact an increased demand for “humanitarian aid” from the provincial authority with which it was dealing.
The final report from the UN body, released yesterday, also found that “the level and nature of inter-country adoptions from Vietnam are essentially influenced by foreign demand”.
It said this was illustrated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of adopted children were under one, the age group most sought by prospective adoptive parents.
Referring to the manner in which children became available for adoption, the report said: “Declarations of so-called ‘abandonment’, which is notoriously difficult to investigate, are intriguingly frequent, but with unexplained ‘peaks’ and ‘troughs’. Procedures for verifying the child’s status and for ensuring free and informed consent to adoption are inadequate and inconsistent.”
The report found that the inter-country procedure was influenced by “a remarkably unhealthy relationship that can exist between agencies and specific residential facilities”. Here the question of “aid” generally seemed to be given far more importance than ensuring that foreign adoption was opted for only as a last resort.
The governments of receiving countries also come in for criticism for not committing themselves to applying the basis principles of the Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoptions in their dealings with Vietnam and for inconsistency in their approaches.
The report acknowledges that Vietnam’s desire for rapid accession to the convention is highly positive. However, it warns that this will require, not only changes in legislation, but a fundamental change in outlook in particular a total divorce between “humanitarian aid” and inter-country adoption. It will also require the development of preventive child welfare measures and functioning child protection systems.
The International Social Service said that the lack of transparency around financial transactions was a source of major concern and demanded immediate action.
Using the Helping Hands agency as an example, it pointed out that last year it informed the Adoption Board that the “adoption fee” for Vietnam had increased by $1,000 to $11,100.
As a result of numerous exchanges, it established that $9,000 of this was in fact “humanitarian aid” and the increase had been requested orally by representatives of the provincial authority that ran the institutions with which Helping Hands dealt.
The reason given was the fall in value of the dollar relative to the Vietnamese dong, but the service noted that in fact the dollar had risen slightly against the dong that year.
The report also expressed grave concern about how “humanitarian aid” was spent and what proportion was spent on institutions rather than child protection.
Meanwhile, a new report from Save the Children reveals that in many countries, four out of five children in “orphanages” still have a living parent.
Poverty is the main reason children end up in institutions, rather than the death of a parent, it adds, saying such children could live with their parents if they were supported in doing so.