Fighting for “orphans”

In the last few weeks, I’ve had a slight problem: raging internal conflict.

Meet Little Guy.

I had a minor obsession with him.

He was in an orphanage in central Vietnam. I was the bad photographer. I don’t know who the cameraman is. I was there to evaluate a health-promotion project sponsored by a non-governmental organization [NGO], hosted at this orphanage, and the cameraman was with the NGO. I don’t remember meeting him.

Although by the point at which we might have met, I was probably somewhat distracted. I was smitten with Little Guy.

You can see from this picture how very short Little Guy was. When we walked up to the orphanage, he came out and gave each of us a huge hug around our waists. No conversation. No eye contact. Just a hug.

I don’t have a picture of that.

He then proceeded to follow us around for the next two hours as we toured the orphanage and learned about the NGO’s project. Gradually warming up to us, he reached the point when he wanted to move beyond hugging: he wanted to talk.

I couldn’t offer much. The kid-appropriate Vietnamese I’d mastered was essentially limited to “What is your name?” and “How old are you?” (Clearly, my survival-skills Vietnamese, comprised of such deep and thought-provoking phases like, “I am a vegetarian”, “Please take me [here]”, and “I only speak English”, were not going to serve me well in this situation.)

I don’t remember Little Guy’s name, but I vaguely remember that he said he was 9. Or 10. Something old, considering his size.

I definitely remember that I was shocked.

*****

This was in 2004, during the first shutdown of the inter-country adoption program between Vietnam and the U.S. I didn’t really understand what was going on at the time with regard to adoption – I was there to work with a UN-affiliated organization, fresh out of graduate school, young, and, frankly, clueless. I was recently engaged and fairly preoccupied with planning a wedding and finding permanent employment when I returned to the States in the fall. Although my fiance (now husband) and I knew that we wanted to adopt, it was a distant consideration for me at the time…until that moment.

In that moment, with that child, a lot of things changed for me.

In a moment of weakness and curiosity, I asked the orphanage director about him. Little Guy could fit in my suitcase, I reasoned; my fiance was a fairly flexible guy. He’d adapt.

The orphanage director responded, “Oh, him? He has a dad who loves him. He can’t be adopted. His dad comes to see him every few months or so.”

It was a bittersweet moment. Obviously, the suitcase plan was a far cry from the child’s best interests. It was a relief to know that, in fact, the child had a family.

But inwardly, a small part of me wondered: where is his dad? And why can’t he come get his son?

Clearly, this child is hurting.

******************

In the past few weeks, individuals in both houses of Congress introduced a new bill, known as the Families for Orphans Act [FFOA]. I have spent a lot of time recently pondering this bill. If you are connected to adoption-related online groups in any way, you’ve probably seen some commentary on it, too.

FFOA is being advertised as a foreign assistance bill. Essentially, it is designed to help kids like Little Guy. The stated purpose of the bill is to locate permanent homes for all children in the world, by funding a new office in the U.S. Department of State to advocate for the needs of orphaned and vulnerable children.

Sounds good, right? We are a rich, powerful country. We SHOULD do more to help kids in developing countries.

Moreover, the authors of the legislation – all Americans – chose to redefine the term “orphan”, rejecting the commonly-accepted UNICEF definition (single orphan as a child who has lost one parent; double orphan as a child who has lost two) and choosing instead to define “orphan” as “a child in need of a permanent home”, and “a family at risk of dissolution” as a family whose circumstances “compromise the health, safety, and well-being of a child”.

Still sounds okay, right? All kids need a family. All kids should be happy and healthy.

The bill eschews foster care settings (which, in other countries, are reasonable and appropriate) (in the U.S., they are often abysmal and no child should have to endure a system so frequently characterized by uncertainty) and offers money to countries who agree to set up inter-country adoption programs with the United States.

That part? Not quite so good. International adoption is already plagued with corruption, driven by the almighty dollar – so now we are going to throw more dollars at governments to…promote more adoption?

FFOA justifies its existence by noting that worldwide, there are “132 million child orphans” (UNICEF), and “unless immediate action is taken”, the number will grow.

That part? Also problematic. 132 million is a tragic, heartwrenching number. Fortunately for the world’s children, it is fairly meaningless when employed in discussions regarding the magnitude of the problem of children who need permanent homes.

To start, consider what the data actually captures: there are 132 million kids worldwide who have lost at least one biological parent – a heartbreaking loss, no doubt, but not one that necessarily renders the child in need of a new home. Using the same UNICEF dataset, 95% of those 132 million children are over the age of 5 – hardly the adoption industry’s target population (or the age range typically sought by prospective parents). Further, many orphaned children live with their surviving parent or, in the case of the double-orphan population (13 million, according to the UNICEF data) extended family. The end result is that there are far, far, fewer children actually seeking new homes, and even fewer children who need homes overseas.

At the same time, there are faces behind those numbers. Even a fraction of 13 million kids constitutes a mind-boggling number of kids. I think about Little Guy (as a hypothetical, of course; he is practically an adult at this point). Under the current internationally-accepted definition, he would be classified as a “single orphan”, having lost his mother.

He would *not* be eligible for international adoption.

With the new law, he might be. And although he might get a new family overseas, he would be ripped away from the only biological family he has.

At my core, I am not okay with this.

At my core, I would donate thousands upon thousands of dollars to his father for financial support, clean water, reliable access to food, and/or consistent access to shelter, if it meant his father could collect his child from the orphanage.

At my core, I want poverty and food insecurity eliminated so that this kid – and all other kids like him – could reunite with their biological families (in the broadest sense of the term).

But poverty is not the only reason for kids living out of a family’s care. What if Little Guy’s dad was addicted to drugs, or alcohol?

Money would not solve that problem.

What if the reason Little Guy’s dad could not see him very often was because he was working in a village far away, and the orphanage was located too far from the village?

This is the reality in many, many resource-poor countries. And giving money? Would not help that.

What if the reason Little Guy didn’t see his father often was because his father was working long, dangerous shifts?

Most developing countries do not have the labor laws that we have in the United States or other industrialized countries; Little Guy’s dad might risk his livelihood to visit his son more than he already does, and if he brought Little Guy home, he would probably be leaving Little Guy unattended for many long hours.

Giving aid would not change those circumstances. Neither would initiating a new inter-country adoption program, either.

And although we don’t know much about Little Guy’s situation, what we do know is this: His father loves him. His father comes to visit him. His father doesn’t want to relinquish him, and in Vietnam, the orphanage system is often used to support parents during any time periods that parents cannot provide appropriate care.

In this situation, who should decide where Little Guy should grow up? His dad? Little Guy himself? The government of Vietnam? An adoption agency?

The authors of the FFOA, sitting in America, who would say he is an “orphan” in need of new, permanent placement?

At my core, although I know that the intent of this policy is good, the implementation of it could be very, very, very bad.

But still, there is a tiny little voice inside me that says: what about the kids like Little Guy?

_______________

On the same trip to central Vietnam, we did some sightseeing.

This child made his living by asking tourists for money:

We gave him fruit, which he’s clutching in this photo.

He had family at home – we asked him, specifically – but they were nowhere to be seen.

Note the lack of shoes on his feet.

Under FFOA, he, too, might be considered an orphan (no shoes, lack of supervision: if a child was wandering around like this in New York City, we would alert social services! Investigate his family! Possibly remove him from his home! How can we possibly allow this to occur in other countries?).

So, too, might the label, “orphan”, be applied to the boarding school students at Philips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH. Lack of permanent adult caregiver present in the living space, you know.

Of course, bottom line: perhaps this child should be in school, rather than perfecting his English at tourist attactions. Perhaps his feet would be softened with some shoes.

But is it the purview of the United States to decide where he gets to live? What about his caregivers? The authorities in his country? Don’t they get a say?

Whatever happened to multilateral solutions?

*****************

In 2007, roughly five years after the U.S. terminated its inter-country adoption program with Cambodia due to concerns of corruption, my husband and I traveled there to volunteer with World Relief in Phnom Penh and surrounding villages.

As part of our trip, we visited an orphanage to deliver toys and games. The children there were ecstatic to have visitors. Although they were probably a skewed sample selected for our visit, the kids we saw there would almost certainly thrive in a permanent home with a family.

However, it is not possible for international adoption to provide that home for any of them: Cambodia lacks the infrastructure and political will to support an ethical, transparent international adoption program.

The FFOA assumes that these children could have a real – as in, permanent – family, but for the lack of technical assistance [in setting up an inter-country adoption program] from the U.S. government.

In reality? Money and pressure from the U.S. government – indeed, pressure from any outside entity – will not change the infrastructure of Cambodia such that it can support transparency.

Change like that must come from within.

*************

However, technical assistance to promote, protect, and preserve families is something that the U.S. does already, and for the most part, does fairly well. U.S. governmental organizations such as PEPFAR and USAID team up with NGOs and faith-based groups to fund projects that promote maternal, child, and family health, prevent disease and sickness, and empower communities. In short, these projects sustain and strengthen children and their families, ultimately increasing the ability of a family to care for children as part of a truly comprehensive, global strategy to support children.

World Relief is one such faith-based organization that receives money from both USAID and PEPFAR (among other donors, both public and private) for its various projects. World Relief’s explicit policy is to rely as much as possible on local individuals who are familiar with the cultural and social mores that drive inequalities in the communities in which they work.

Behold, technical assistance in action: the World Relief Hope Project.

Members of the local community serve as health educators, riding on motorbikes out to rural villages to regale kids and adults alike with impromptu puppet shows. Puppets Ernie & Ernie teach kids about kindness and healthy habits, like handwashing, eating healthy foods, eliminating mosquito breeding grounds (overturn those coconut shells!), and sleeping with a mosquito net at night (to protect against malaria).

Some children, as you can see, lacked clothing. Past the age that it might be socially acceptable to lack clothing.

Some of the children were caring for other children.

But all of these children lived with caregivers who, ostensibly, loved them.

The adults, too, came out from their homes when they heard the ruckus of the puppet show; curious to see what all the fuss was about, they laughed at the funny puppets along with the children.

Research suggests that community-based interventions effect positive change at home, improving the health of children and their families. USAID and government grants mandate rigorous program monitoring and evaluation to assess both efficacy (outcomes: for instance, # of malaria cases in children under 5 pre- and post-intervention) and process (including, among other things, considerations of whether the program is culturally appropriate).

After the show, the adults continued to congregate, hugging some children, scolding others for misbehavior. The unspoken rules in the States to resist reprimanding unfamiliar children did not exist here: to the outside observer, at least, all children belonged.

The entire village, not the nuclear family, guided and supported the child.

And to the outside observer, it wasn’t the clothes, or the shoes, or the brick house on 2.2 acres of land that gave each child a home.

No…it was the community, the familiarity, the love, and the support.

Under FFOA, these children might be considered “orphans” if they live with an extended family member in a relationship that is not legally defined, despite the very real possibility that the legal system to establish the relationship was inaccessible.

Under FFOA, perhaps these children – lacking clothes, shoes, or any other arbitrary yardstick deemed to define what “compromises” each child’s health or safety – would be considered in need of a different permanent home.

Under FFOA, these children might be targeted for domestic or international adoption.

Is that the answer to missing clothes or shoes?

*******************

So…FFOA?

It really depends on what you think.

Contrary to what those who support FFOA might argue, it turns out that there already exists a multilateral, almost universally-recognized standard for global child welfare that specifically targets the basic human rights of children, including the right to have a permanent home: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In fact, this agreement has existed for almost 19 years, and to this day, programs continue to support and educate children of their very basic rights to safety, security, and stability. Curiously, the U.S. stands in solidarity with Somalia as the only two countries on the planet who have yet to ratify the Convention.

If we want to join the global fight for children, perhaps the first step for us is to indicate to the rest of the world that we share their values regarding child welfare, rather than creating our own standard. The U.S. cannot – and should not – unilaterally reconstruct the world’s approach to child welfare.

Moreover, the U.S. cannot compel other countries to open new inter-country adoption programs, particularly in countries where an insufficient infrastructure is inadequate to ensure that the children placed for adoption are legitimately in need of a home overseas.

At the same time, the fact remains: there are millions of vulnerable children in the world.

Resolved: All children deserve a home.

But here is the cold, painful truth:

We can stand up and say we believe that, but then turn around and support a piece of legislation that attempts to redefine child welfare – not in our own country, mind you, but unilaterally, in everyone else’s country, diplomacy aside. If the goal is to find as many children for families as possible, FFOA is perfect. Applying an arbitrary orphan definition, paying countries to accept it, and then opening up as many countries as possible for inter-country adoptions is both a sure recipe for fraud and a way to dramatically increase the number of children available for adoption.

But if we truly believe in the right of every child to have a home and a future, and the goal is to help as many vulnerable children as possible, in a way that is respectful, diplomatic, child-centric, and sustainable, we need to look very hard at ourselves and the world around us and start to ask the hard questions about how we are going to tackle a deep-rooted, complex problem.

We need to embrace holistic approaches to family preservation and poverty relief.

We need to realize that we join other stakeholders who are also seeking answers to family dissolution and orphaned children, and that the U.S. is only one voice in a chorus.

We need to be honest: international adoption can be a wonderful way to build a family. It can be both a blessing and heartwrenching for those in the triad. But it is not, and will never be, an appropriate or sustainable tool for poverty relief.

We need to acknowledge that while there might be 13 million double orphans in the world, the vast majority of them are not in need of a home. Of the small number of children seeking a home, very few are appropriate candidates for domestic or international adoption; therefore, we need to brainstorm some other solutions.

We need to hold our legislators responsible to use data that accurately represents the reality of the problem.

We need to fight, fight, fight for kids and biological parents who might not have a voice, understanding that that voice might not be what we expect (to parent, to relinquish, to seek kinship care), but it is valuable and critical nonetheless.

We need to admit the role that privilege plays in our worldview.

And we need to fight harder still for sustainable, culturally-relevant solutions that are driven by reality, not greed.

It’s time to move the conversation from simply advocating for a bill with a undeniably hopeful, yet entirely misleading, name, to actually discussing, debating, and confronting the very issues it claims to be addressing.

Let’s get started.

Rachel recently joined the Board of Ethica. She became an enthusiastic advocate of ethics and transparency in adoption when she and her husband abandoned their plan to adopt from Vietnam in the fall of 2007 amidst early reports of corruption. She and her husband hope to be able to pursue adoption again in the not-too-distant future.