Dec 21st, 2008 by jena
According to the News and Observer, after a recent trip to Vietnam;
U.S. Rep. David Price hopes the United States can soon complete an agreement with Vietnam on international adoptions after a breakdown between the two countries this year.
Read the whole article here.
Nov 27th, 2008 by Administrator
From the Irish press at the Herald:
Irish adoptive parents fear that Vietnam may pull out of an adoption deal which will prevent more than 200 children finding a new home in Ireland.
……
Fears are growing since a new Adoption Bill, which is due to be published by the Department of Health and Children, will change Ireland’s adoption rules, and could frazzle adoption relations with Vietnam.
Irish officials traveled to Vietnam recently to start discussions on new adoption agreements. Yet it is feared that both governments will not reach a new adoption agreement before the current agreement expires.
…..
Adoptions between Vietnam and Ireland are currently regulated by a state-to-state agreement, and the spokesperson says the department now needs “to ensure that the agreement reflects the Hague Convention as comprehensively as possible”.
You can read the full article here.
It is interesting that Ireland’s changing position on International adoption is following a course so similar to that of the US. Although it is certainly concerning that 200 children who were already matched with families may not be allowed to be adopted, it is also a positive step toward ethics in adoption. Hopefully simultaneous pressure from multiple countries on Vietnam to become a Hague signatory and to hold them to higher standards in adoption centralization and policy will produce a more transparent future program as free from corruption as possible.
Nov 19th, 2008 by Christina
The Office of Childrens Issues in the U.S. State Department has created a new website specifically for International Adoptions, Intercountry Adoption. This new site has much of the information previously provided through the travel.state.gov site plus more information about the Hague and more up to date statistics and charts for each country. It is valuable resource for anyone interested in international adoptions.
Another new resource on the web is This Website from The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. Created by the author of the recent article, “The Lie We Love“, E.J. Graff, this site is a wealth of information and links pertaining to the most popular countries for International Adoptions. Like the article, this site contains a lot of information that is difficult to read. It could also be argued that each country is presented in a negative light as the more positive aspects of adoptions are not highlighted. However the facts are well documented and linked. It may not be an easy site to read, but it is a very important one. I would urge anyone who is in the process of choosing a country to adopt from to visit this site before making your final decision. Some countries have more severe corruption issues than others and PAP’s have a responsibility to seek out the most ethical programs available. Unfortunately all too often PAP’s don’t find out about underlying issues until they are deeply invested in their adoptions - but this website may help prevent that.
Oct 27th, 2008 by Administrator
From JCICS:
On October 13th Joint Council announced its understanding that formal negotiations between the Governments of Vietnam and the United States regarding an interim Memorandum of Understanding were scheduled in the coming weeks. It is now our understanding that these scheduled formal negotiations have been postponed.
While Joint Council does not have information as to a new date, we do believe that this is a postponement and not a cancellation of talks.
Oct 24th, 2008 by Administrator
From Ethica:
Ethica is pleased to announce our new outreach initiative to give voice to the adoption community on a state by state level. We as an organization have long fought the battle of dealing with issues on a state by state basis, and we have developed the Ethica50 initiative to respond to the ever growing need to be a powerful voice in our local states.
Ethica50 provides 50 forums where people interested in ethical adoption for a state of interest to them can work together for common goals, gather information about current adoption issues, and volunteer for Ethica.
The Ethica50 lists are open to all. Members are welcome to create calls to action among list members, but no one from the lists may speak for Ethica unless you have been given explicit permission by Ethica to do so.
Ethica50 is sponsored by Ethica. Ethica is a nonprofit corporation that seeks to be an impartial voice for ethical adoption practices worldwide, and provides education, assistance, and advocacy to the adoption and foster care communities. In order to maintain an impartial voice:
For more information about Ethica visit http://www.ethicanet.org/.
This list will not be monitored for content, and all opinions, including those that differ from Ethica’s, are welcome. Lively dialog is welcome, but flaming and harassment will not be tolerated.
If someone’s behavior makes it impossible for conversation to continue, the offending party will be removed at Ethica’s discretion. Please be aware that people can be, and have been, successfully sued for their comments made on internet lists and forums. Ethica is not responsible for the comments made by this list’s members nor any legal action resulting from them.
Please join a list from below and meet others in your state who share your interest in adoption, child welfare, reform, countries of origin, and anything else adoption related that you want to talk about!
EthicaAlabama
Oct 22nd, 2008 by Administrator
According to Sveriges Radio, a child from Vietnam is adopted by Swedish parents about once a week on average.
However, the government has decided not to extend its current agreement with Vietnam, which runs out in the autumn of 2009.
The decision, to be announced on Thursday, comes following reports which raise troubling questions about Vietnam’s adoption practices.
An investigation by the Swedish government revealed that biological parents in Vietnam are not always aware that their children have been put up for adoption. There are also reports that money has been paid in exchange for children to be adopted.
~”Sweden to stop adoptions from Vietnam“, David Landes, The Local
Oct 18th, 2008 by jena
As a former PAP, who is now a P and AP, I am grateful to Mirah, Amyadoptee and Stella for their comments on the last post. Do I agree with all of their points of view? No, but I am still grateful. Because left to myself, I would not have the value of the perspective of the group of people to whom my son will someday belong. The adult adoptee. Do they speak for my son? That would be too simplistic a view, but they do articulate thoughts and emotions, as well as researched facts that apply to my son, and may someday be part of his framework.
I believe discussion is always valuable as a way to lead us to further understanding. To that end, I would like to share my story, and how our family came to adoption, and what we have learned so far along the way.
When we first started the adoption process, I thought we were an enigma in the adoption world. I soon found out that I was wrong. I “met” many families online who had/have similar stories to ours, for whom adoption was not a last resort.
As a young girl growing into a young woman, there was only ever one thing that I knew for sure that I wanted to be when I grew up. A mom. Sure, I had huge aspirations, in fact when I was five, with the encouragement of my mother, I decided that I would have five vocations for the five days of the week and then I would have 2 days off, doctor, teacher, ballerina…I can’t remember the other two. But the one constant was that I wanted to be a mom.
I am not exactly sure why, but as a young child, what I saw in my head when I was a mom was kids of all colors and ethnicity’s. Perhaps it was because we lived in student housing for a large seminary and there were many international families in the the housing complex where we lived. All of us children ran around and played and color was not an issue. Oh, if only that were the reality…
So as I grew up, being the caucasian woman that I am, I assumed that I would either marry a man of another ethnicity, but even with that assumption, I usually assumed that adoption would be how I would build my family. I was very idealistic and even thought my family would be like, at least ten kids of all ethnicity’s and be like our very own little United Nations. I don’t think that anymore.
Within three months of meeting my then boyfriend, I told him that I was adopting my children, and that if he was not open to it, he could move on. He did not move on and is now the father of my 3 kids.
About a month after we got married I started checking out adoption agencies. Most of them had the requirement that marriages be at least one year old at the time of application, so I waited, not too patiently. During that time my husband expressed his desire to have biological children as well as adopted children, and since we hadn’t been married long enough to adopt, we decided to try to get pregnant. It was not a matter that was necessarily well thought out, or a matter of preference, it was simply a matter of which happened first. Pregnancy came rather easily for us, twice.
When our second biological child was eight months old, we started researching agencies again. I got on list-serves like APV. I started reading blogs, both PAP blogs and adult adoptee blogs. Providentially, an adult adoptee who was adopted from Vietnam and I became close friends. At this point in the process, I still had a bit of a Messiah complex when it came to adoption, but the more I read, the more I realized how equally damaging are the “last resort” complex, the “I am saving the helpless orphan” complex as well as parent entitlement.
Even though I was still pretty green, and had no idea how huge, complex and money driven the adoption industry is, my husband and I knew enough at least to look for an agency that at least professed to have a “family for children that need them” mentality and vision statement,as opposed to a “child for a family that wants them” mentality. We also knew enough to look for an agency that had child welfare programs in the country, as well as a proven track record as a humanitarian organization over a long period of time.
We were very blessed(or lucky, depending our your perspective) to have decided to use one of the three agencies that I have come to personally believe have done their very best to remain ethical in their Vietnam programs over the past 3 years(that would be 3, out of 42 agencies).
We asked for an infant, either gender. Along the way, as I began to address my entitlement issues, I came to believe, very strongly, that choosing gender should not be allowed. This opinion is not always popular, but it is mine. I have also come to believe that asking for most qualifications(age, health) is another entitlement issue.
We recieved our referral in January of 2007, we traveled in late March 2007.
I am one of what many current PAP’s call the “lucky” ones. Not only did I get “my” child home, BUT I already had 2 biological kids home.
What I have come to realize through our journey, and I have said on my own personal blog, is that children are not a right. Never. And to see them as such only diminishes the value of human life and reduces them to the status of a commodity. Children(which in my opinion, includes embryos) are not objects to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. It is terrible to lose tens of thousands of dollars on an adoption, but as I am sure many of you PAP’s know now, we are not guaranteed anything when we hand over our money to an organization whose existense depends on money(as all adoption agencies do).
There has been so much that I have realized over the past 3 years since we began this journey. Am I lucky that I have hindsight as 20/20? It depends on your perspective. While I have many assurances that our adoption was ethical, I do not know for sure. For me, when I look at my son, I KNOW that having him in our family, while it is most definitely a blessing for us, may not be a blessing for him. It is not a blessing for his first family. And, in fact, it may be their greatest source of pain and grief. Especially if I am honest and recognize that at this point, the likelihood that his adoption was 100% ethical is small. Is having him home worth not knowing if his first mother grieves her stolen child? As his second mother, there is no way I can honestly say that it is worth it. Because I love him too much. Does it make sense to say to my someday adult son, I loved you so much, I may have participated in stealing you from your biological mother?
If I am one of the lucky Vietnam AP’s, it is at the expense of my son .
What is my point, I can’t reverse this course, I can’t “give him back.” My point is that we have an obligation to use the knowledge we have to change the course for the future. Are all adoptions from Vietnam suspect? I don’t believe so, in fact I know of several adoptions from Vietnam that in my opinion, pass the litmus test for being ethically completed. My point is that I started off this journey at one place, in one position, and am now being moved by information and experience, to another position. And it is good. Has it been difficult- absolutely. There are parts of our journey that were very difficult that I cannot share here because they are my son’s story to tell.
Do I believe that international adoption is 100% corrupt and always focused on the money? No, I do not. I believe that adoption, in its most beautiful and purest form, fills a need. Where the water gets muddy for me is, what am I doing to help create the need for adoption? Is my very participation in international adoption helping to create a market system that is thereby susceptible, and indeed, vulnerable to corruption? Is my lifestyle as a Westerner helping to create situations in other countries that do not allow families to be able to afford to raise their children? What am I doing to stop the need for adoption? I blogged about what I think we all can and need to be doing to change adoption systems worldwide a year ago on this site. Because, if indeed, adoption is all about the children, we can all agree that many, if not most of the time(excepting cases of abuse/neglect etc) it is the best thing for children to stay with their biological families. IF, indeed.
As we reported earlier today,
The Government of Vietnam and the Government of the United States have agreed that U.S. citizens will not be able to adopt Vietnamese children until both countries sign a new agreement or Vietnam joins the Hague Convention.
In the clearest and most official statement to date, prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) were told the door to Vietnam adoptions is truly closed. There will be no additional grace period for dossiers that were logged in but not matched by September 1st. There will be no exceptions made for children with special needs.
I know many in the Vietnam adoption community are heartbroken at this news. “What about the children? Why are they being punished?” I understand this anguish. I have felt it myself, when Cambodia, the country of my daughter’s birth, shut down nearly seven years ago. And now I am deeply disappointed to see my son’s country shut down as well. But nearly seven years of hindsight gives me a different view on this closure - a more hopeful view.
First, we need to step back and realize that adoptions from Vietnam did not end on September 1st. While referrals ceased after that date, many adoptions are still in process - 534, according to the Department of State. That’s more than entire number of adoptions in 1996 [354 that year], 1997 [425], 1998 [478], 2003 [the year of the last shutdown, 382 adoptions completed] or 2006 [the year adoptions reopened under the new MOU, 163 adoptions completed]. And that 534 is just adoptions in process as of September 1st - that doesn’t include all adoptions completed in 2008 up to that point. In fact it’s likely that more children will be adopted to the U.S. from Vietnam in 2008 than in any other year in history.
Further, while these 534 adoptions are being processed to completion, the United States and Vietnam have already begun the work of negotiating a new Agreement. While it may seem to us that nothing is happening or that the pace is much too slow, we truly don’t know what is going on behind the scenes. And personally I see Vietnam’s naming of a lead negotiator and the issuing of joint statements to be real signs of progress.
Clearly though, the issues that led to this closure are deep and complex and will take time and sincere effort on both sides to resolve. Which is why I believe it was prudent for both countries to agree not to allow any exceptional cases. As much as we all agree that children with medical issues have true and immediate needs, the reality is that each additional case that comes down the pipeline will only serve to slow down the work of implementing a new and better agreement. We saw this first hand in Cambodia. The circumstances of that shutdown were somewhat different and it was difficult for USCIS to determine where to draw the line in the processing of cases. As a result, they allowed families who had not even begun the process (but had only shown “intention” by filing an 1600a or even just by writing “2″ in the number of children box on their first adoption application) to jump on the end of the pipeline. The result was that the American embassy and State department task force remained focused on those pipeline cases years after the Suspension was put into place. During that time, almost no progress was made on implementing a new procedure to allow adoptions to reopen. And by the time the last pipeline case was completed, most P/APs had moved on and there was almost no pressure on the U.S. government to do whatever necessary to get the suspension lifted. We don’t want to see that happen here. The reality is resources and staff are limited. For the good of all the children in need of families, we can not let a few exceptions drain those resources.
Finally, and I think this is the most important point, there simply wasn’t any way to protect cases processed under a Special Needs exception from fraudulant activity. To quote the USCIS FAQs :
With the de-licensing of adoption service providers and the strong possibility that a post-Sept. 1 special needs system would be decentralized, it is likely that a post-Sept. 1, 2008 adoption system would have even less safeguards and protections for children than the pre-Sept. 1 system with which we had significant concerns. Therefore, DOS and USCIS have determined that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement a transparent and reliable adoption program for the special needs and other excepted types of cases in Vietnam without new protections and safeguards.
We all want to think that no one would exploit a Special Needs exception - that only legally relinquished children with true and significant medical and developmental needs would be referred. But we must consider what led to the shutdown in the first place - “false information in documentation”, “documents that have been fabricated outright and official documents issued improperly or based on incorrect information”, as well as “minimal oversight” and a donation system that was found to have “a distorting effect” on the adoption system. Consider the following quote from the Embassy’s Summary of Irregularities in Adoptions in Vietnam (4/25/2008):
Orphanage directors in four provinces have reported to the Embassy that there is a strong financial incentive to maximize the number of children available for foreign adoption in their centers. The donation provided per child (available for intercountry adoption) can be up to 10 times the standard government funding. Hospital and social workers have reported that orphanage directors offer them financial incentives for each child sent to their orphanage.
With financial incentive like that, how could we be certain that orphanage directors wouldn’t falsify medical documents in order to make a child eligible for a special needs exception? It would be simple enough to produce a document to show a child had tested positive for HIV or Hep B/C … and then find that they “miraculously” tested negative once they were home in America. Or what if orphanages began soliciting minor special needs children from intact families? Nobody wants to think that these kinds of things could happen, but without proper protections in place there would be no guarantees.
Today as we read these statements from the United States and Vietnam, let us remember that this closure is not immutable - the doors will not remain closed forever. Both countries are sincere in their commitment to improve procedures and negotiate a new and better agreement. By removing the possibility of exceptions officials on both sides can focus on what is truly important - creating an ethical and transparent system that truly safeguards both children and families. It may not happen as quickly as we want it to, but I believe it will be worth the wait.
Oct 16th, 2008 by Administrator
The Department of State and USCIS have posted a US - Vietnam Joint Statement on Adoptions. Below is an excerpt:
1. …On September 23, 2008, the Vietnamese Department of International Adoptions (DIA) provided the U.S. Embassy with a list of 534 U.S. dossiers that received referrals before September 1. These cases will be processed to conclusion. Prospective adoptive parents unclear about the status of their case may wish to verify via e-mail with the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi (hanoiadoptions@state.gov) to confirm whether their case is on the DIA list.
2. All cases that were not matched with a child by September 1, 2008 will be returned to the U.S. adoption service providers. On October 10, 2008, DIA issued instructions to all U.S. adoption service providers that they must retrieve these dossiers from DIA by October 28, 2008. After October 28, unclaimed dossiers will be transmitted to the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, which will return the dossiers to the prospective adoptive parents or their agencies.
3. The Government of Vietnam and the Government of the United States have agreed that U.S. citizens will not be able to adopt Vietnamese children until both countries sign a new agreement or Vietnam joins the Hague Convention. While Vietnamese Decree 69/2006 contains provisions that could allow for the adoptions in certain limited cases, including children with medical issues and certain relative adoptions, the Government of Vietnam has not developed the implementing regulations for these procedures. Accordingly, the Ministry of Justice of Vietnam, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the U.S. Department of State have determined that neither government will process adoption cases, except for those cases that received an official referral prior to September 1, 2008, until both countries sign a new agreement or both are parties to the Hague Convention. USCIS and the Department of State strongly caution adoption service providers to stop matching prospective adoptive parents with children from Vietnam. Prospective adoptive parents should not seek or accept post-September 1 referrals from Vietnam at this time.
In addition, USCIS has posted their own update and a set of FAQ’s on the statement.
Oct 12th, 2008 by Administrator
On October 10, JCICS released a position statement on Special Needs adoptions in Vietnam that reads, in part:
Vietnamese law does allow for the adoption of a child with Special Needs, despite the expired MOA. However, this Special Needs adoption, if pursued, would have to take place as an independent adoption. An independent adoption is conducted without the involvement of a U.S.-based Adoption Service Provider.
Joint Council strongly discourages the pursuit of an independent Special Needs adoption at this time.
We have been hearing rumors about some agencies giving out Special Needs “matches” and referrals on various email lists and message boards. For families who hope to adopt a child with Special Needs from Vietnam and who have not received a referral by September 1, we can’t emphasize enough that the JCICS statement clarifies that these adoptions would have to be facilitated independently and not through a US Adoption Agency.
JCICS outlines several reasons for taking this stance including the increased likelihood for abuse due to lack of governmental oversight and safeguards, the lack of a fee schedule, the lack of a definition of ‘Special Needs’, the lack of pre- and post-adoptive support traditionally supplied by the ASP and the damaging short and long-term impact all of these issues could have on all members of the adoptive triad.
Cumulatively, these factors suggest that independent, Special Needs adoptions could create an environment that increases the possibility of illegal, unethical adoption practices.
A most serious warning is issued to those who are considering a Special Needs adoption in Vietnam:
However, the pursuit of independent, Special Needs adoptions that fall outside of governmental and legal oversight, could derail negotiations. Because the independent adoption process of Vietnamese children with Special Needs runs completely counter to the intentions of both the governments of Vietnam and the United States, any attempts by Potential Adoptive Parents to circumvent governmental, agency and Hague stipulations might be seen as a breach of trust and fidelity- not to mention the risk it poses to other orphaned children in need of a forever family.
In addition to discouraging Potential Adoptive Parents from the pursuit of an independent, Special Needs adoption, Joint Council also strongly urges them not to accept a referral of any Vietnamese child from any source at this time. Any referral made after September 1, 2008, is not guaranteed compliant with Hague principles, the intents of the Vietnamese and U.S. governments, or the best interests of the child.
These warnings are clear in their content and scope. The best way we all can support the children of Vietnam is by educating ourselves about past abuses, learning what led to both major breakdowns in the adoption process in Vietnam in the last 7 years and learning more about the negotiation process toward creating a new, more protective MOU. Agencies who have not already done so should seek Hague accreditation in preparation for a future MOU. And families should, under all circumstances, resist the temptation to accept referrals or supply payment to agencies at this time.
VVAI commends JCICS for their difficult stance on this sensitive issue. We all want the very best for each and every orphan in Vietnam and we recognize that the best is not always the most obvious solution.
Continue on to the JCICS site to read the full statement on Adoptions in Vietnam.
Voices for Vietnam Adoption Integrity
A collaborative blog advocating ethics in adoption
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