In March, a delegation of officials from Vietnam attended a conference sponsored by the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS). The delegation also met with officials from the US Department of State. After the conference, JCICS President Tom DiFilipo said in an discussion on Creating a Family that the delegation declared that Vietnam intends to become a party to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. There has been no official announcement yet from the Vietnamese government.
After the conference, some agencies began sending updates to waiting families indicating that new adoption laws are slated to be considered by the Vietnamese government in October of this year. According to the process of Vietnamese law, new laws must be voted on twice before becoming law. This means that new adoption laws would have to be voted on in October 2009 and again in May 2010. If the proposal passed both votes, it would take effect in January 2011.
However, this DOES NOT mean that Vietnam will accede to the Hague or that it will be Hague compliant in January 2011. It simply means that Vietnam will be moving toward creating the infrastructure necessary to become a Hague nation, including the creation of a central authority to oversee adoptions. One must remember that it took the United States nearly 15 years to ratify the Hague because it first had to standardize international adoption laws that had previously been state-regulated.
There has been some dialogue that the United States would consider a new interim agreement with Vietnam prior to January 2011 if Vietnam agreed to accede to the Hague. One agency said “both governments agreed that they did want an interim agreement,” while another agency said there “was hope” for an agreement. In the Creating a Family interview, Tom DiFilipo said that there has been some discussion about an interim MOU for special needs children or adoption by relatives, but added that this was in the “very early stages of conversation.”
While we at VVAI are mindful of the urgency that children growing up in institutions in Vietnam (and around the world) presents, we would caution readers to utilize all resources at their disposal to check and recheck any and all updates that are coming from agencies. While there is a need for families for children, we caution PAP’s to be mindful of the length of the process that it takes to become Hague compliant. We would also caution readers to wait for any official word to come from the US Department of State. Agencies are a valuable source of information, especially when what they are saying can be verified.
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