Vietnam’s National Assembly Continues To Hammer Out New Adoption Law

According to Viet Nam News on Thursday, the National Assemby’s Standing Committee heard a report on the draft law prepared by Deputy Minister of Justice, Dinh Trung Tung. In his report Tung emphasized new rules that encourage domestic adoptions.

Tung said 20,000 children had been adopted over the past five years, only 13,000 of whom were adopted by domestic families. The rest were adopted by foreigners.

During that time there were shortcomings and overlaps in the regulating legal documents, hindering their effectiveness in real life circumstances.

Draft Article 15 regulates that orphanages or other centres involved in raising children are responsible for trying to find domestic adoptive parents for children within 30 days of their arrival at the organisation. If they fail to find a domestic family to adopt the child within the 30 days, they should send the name of the child and relevant documents to the Ministry of Justice for publication on its national website. If no interest is shown by domestic families to adopt the child after 30 days, the opportunity will open up to foreigners.

This regulation does not apply to children with disabilities, HIV/AIDS, victims of Agent Orange/dioxin or with other serious diseases.

Tung also discussed new regulations that have been added regarding the responsibilities of agencies and the role of orphanages in giving referrals.

According to Tung, new draft rules have been included for introducing children to potential adoptive parents from other countries. For example, Draft Articles 36 and 41 regulate that only the Ministry of Justice may introduce children to prospective parents, which is expected to prevent any malpractice by orphanages.

These new regulations are not set in stone. Other deputies at the meeting disagreed with these priorities and some suggested other issues they would like to see addressed in the law.

[Chairman of the Legal Committee Nguyen Van Thuan] disagreed with the solution that some activities would be undertaken by the Adoption Department under the Ministry of Justice.

“It’s not suitable with the ministry’s State management role. It would do better to work as a guard keeper in this situation.

“Introducing children to foreigners should be the role of social organisations,” he argued.

Chair person of the Committee for Social Affairs Truong Thi Mai said there should not be a regulation against adoption of children who are handicapped, have HIV/AIDS and Agent Orange/dioxin victims.

“If we do that, I’m afraid there will be people who take advantage of the rule and will refuse to care for disadvantaged children,” she said.

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