An Open Letter to President Clinton and MOWCYA
On March 13, 2011, international adoption doctor and Worldwide Orphans Foundation founder, Dr. Jane Aronson wrote an open letter to President Clinton (yes, Clinton) in an effort to get him involved in the Ethiopia issues. REFORM Talk has prepared a re-write.
We have taken the actual text and added our views in green text. Words that we disagree with have been crossed-out. A second version without the cross-outs is below this one for easier reading.
An Open Letter to President Clinton and MOWCYA (inspired by the same, written by Dr. Jane Aronson on March 13, 2011)
Although, according to the JCICS, only 4 percent of children from Africa are special needs children-
Once again, tragedy corruption strikes orphans – children who might have been adopted into a permanent home have had their hopes and dreams demolished by the unethical actions of the adoption industry. This time it’s Ethiopia, where international adoption has been growing much too rapidly over the last six years, especiallyfor such a small and easily corruptible infrastructure to handle, beginning with a handful of older children in the 1980’s and 90’s. By last year 2,500 children – sweet babies and toddlers (and plenty of older children who can remember their biological families, especially if they were told to lie about them) were adopted by American families.
Now, the Ethiopian government has announced that it is reducing the number of visas approved for adoption from 50 per work day to five. The outcry from those waiting to become parents, from adoption agencies and from for profit organizations advocating for children, is predictable [we agree that the adoption industry propaganda and the Freudian slip of the use of “for profit organizations” is indeed predictable] and equally predictable, the world at large appears to be indifferent to the anguish of the families of harvested and trafficked children this ruling is causing. And so, the numbers of children adopted from Ethiopia will decrease [even though they only represent 0.001% of Ethiopian children at risk, according to the JCICS, the lobbying organization that represents the adoption business and upon whose board Dr. Aronson serves], the time it takes to adopt will increase, and international adoption in general, and the children prospective adoptive parents and the adoption industry in particular, are the losers.
The destruction of international adoption has become the result of unethical adoption industry workers who take advantage of the local populations. the cure for a misdiagnosed disease. Uninspired, bureaucratic, Head-in-the-sand adoption industry workers who are desperate decision-makers set up quick adoption shops in governments countries, including our own, and in large child welfare organizations, like the troubled Child Protection Services in the US. raise the cry of As a result, “trafficking” and the rest is inevitable: to protect the children and stop the trafficking, adoption industry players that are involved must finally be held accountable.adoption.
The real disease – the one not addressed – is much more complex. It involves developing nations, communities without social welfare systems or resources to help families living in extreme poverty, suffering from illness, depression and hopelessness. Without education, economic strengthening, and access to medical care, particularly HIV/AIDS care, families become desperate and relinquish their children to orphanages. That is why we support the MOWCYA to focus on establishing a better child welfare system to take care of the rest of the 99 percent of children who are not potential victims of a misguided and uncontrollable adoption industry. And when the numbers are too large and the government is too embarrassed and when those who believe a child is better off rotting by the side of the road than living in a different culture, well, that’s when we start hearing “trafficking,” and that’s when international adoption is slowed, then halted. All in the name of the children.
People close to adoption knew the decision in Ethiopia was coming. There was data generated from adoptive parents’ actual stories. These brave adoptive parents bucked the typical “don’t rock the boat and ruin it for everyone else” ethos shared by many prospective adoptive parents and had the courage to report that were murmurs everywhere that “irregularities, perhaps improprieties” were found in paperwork for children being referred for international adoption. For more details, go to the survey conducted by PEAR of adoptive parents at http://pear-now.blogspot.com/2010/10/pear-releases-results-of-ethiopia.html. The data within was further elaborated upon in a Voice of America article in December 2010, found at www.voanews.com/english/news/Under-Pressure-Ethiopia-Plans-Crackdown-on-Baby-Business-111848424.html New forms and more careful investigations were recommended by the US State Department, and the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia worked diligently to ensure that the paperwork was prepared transparently.
But let’s get real. The best paperwork in the world is not going to fix a tragic social situation which is about the disintegration and dismantling of families due to poverty, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, natural disasters, conflict, and war. Yes, there is trafficking, but and even if Ethiopia had with the Hague accords implemented [it is nowhere close to implementing them and no announcements have been made suggesting that this will change], there just can’t be, due to weak enforcement and punishment of the Hague, the same degree of trafficking will occur, otherwise and sadly we have all just spent millions of dollars on an agreement to protect orphans which has in effect accomplished nothing.
I think that there is a place for adoption both domestic and international, but I am not so foolish as to think that adoption is the solution for millions of social orphans whose families were so poor or ill that their desperate parents were driven to relinquish them to residential care facilities (also known as orphanages, institutions, children’s homes, hogars, leagans, dom rebyonka, mladost, crèches, etc.).
In the years that I’ve we have been tracking corruption and helping parents prepare for adoption, I’ve we have always believed that we should have been investing in the social infrastructure of the “sending” countries. If we had done this 20 years ago when I first entered this field, we would have had more permanency, family preservation, group homes, kinship and non-related foster care, family-based care, and community-based solutions for children without parental care. And if we had managed this social infrastructure as a capacity/community building endeavor, we could have continued international adoption for those children who were abandoned/relinquished and completely without any vestige of identifiable family ended the need for international adoption at all, as kinship and local adoptions would have become so prevalent, foreign-born adoptive parents would rarely be needed.
In any case, here we are again….doesn’t anyone learn from the past? How childish of me to ask such a question! I can’t help myself because I have watched all of this trafficking unfold so many times in so many countries and here we are witnessing another adoption industry push to sweep it under the rug and downplay just how entrenched the corruption is.disaster. Thousands of kids will be left and parents will be stuck in limbo for months and even years…just look at each of the countries I noted above. You can go online and find the corruption and trafficking stories cached for years… as tragic as any earthquake or tsunami that leaves children stranded and alone. And how many resources are there for these families who were given no aid whatsoever by their adoption agencies after they adopted children with severe emotional issues, and whose family structure is ripped apart, with dissolutions and disruptions of adoptions and continuing misery for all. With no help in sight.
No one wins. There is bitterness and anger and the orphaned children in institutions and original families who have been deceived and had their children stolen are nameless to most of us. There are original families who know don’t even have these their children’s from pictures and visits and they all will suffer. I am privy to many stories of original parents waiting years to get find their kids who were sent out of to countries around the world…even herculean measures for some where these poor parents who are turned away when they tried to visit their already-adopted children several times a year in the orphanages watching their, not knowing what happened to their children and deprived of the ability to ever find out because the local powers-that-be and the adoption agencies had their paperwork changed become teenagers….
In fact, this is a deplorable hostage situation in which poor people continue to be used. President Clinton, you secured the release of two young journalists a few years ago and I met them at the Glamour Woman of the Year Awards in 2009 when I was an award recipient. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were freed because you thought their situation was grave enough to go to Korea and personally negotiate for their release. That’s what needs to be done now. We need some diplomacy to pry open the lid for a moment. The Ethiopian government’s concerns must be addressed, but so must the concerns of the waiting parents and most of all, of the children. We need a strategic plan for de-institutionalization and community building. There are countless NGOs just like mine, Worldwide Orphans Foundation, prepared to sit down with government departments and other big NGOs to help come to the aid of the government to provide concurrent planning, adoption and social welfare infrastructure to fill in the gap so that we don’t have yet another “Guatemala 900” and the continued bullying of adoption.
We need to use creative ways to help kids have permanency.
President Clinton, we need youplease don’t let the adoption industry divert your attention from the corruption …..
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Without Cross-outs
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An Open Letter to President Clinton and MOWCYA (inspired by the same, written by Dr. Jane Aronson on March 13, 2011)
Although, according to the JCICS, only 4 percent of children from Africa are special needs children-
Once again, corruption strikes orphans – children who might have been adopted into a permanent home have had their hopes and dreams demolished by the unethical actions of the adoption industry. This time it’s Ethiopia, where international adoption has been growing much too rapidly over the last six years, especiallyfor such a small and easily corruptible infrastructure to handle, beginning with a handful of older children in the 1980’s and 90’s. By last year 2,500 children – sweet babies and toddlers (and plenty of older children who can remember their biological families, especially if they were told to lie about them) were adopted by American families.
Now, the Ethiopian government has announced that it is reducing the number of visas approved for adoption from 50 per work day to five. The outcry from those waiting to become parents, from adoption agencies and from for profit organizations advocating for children, is predictable [we agree that the adoption industry propaganda and the Freudian slip of the use of “for profit organizations” is indeed predictable] and equally predictable, the world at large appears to be indifferent to the anguish of the families of harvested and trafficked children is causing. And so, the numbers of children adopted from Ethiopia will decrease [even though they only represent 0.001% of Ethiopian children at risk, according to the JCICS, the lobbying organization that represents the adoption business and upon whose board Dr. Aronson serves], the time it takes to adopt will increase, and international adoption in general, and prospective adoptive parents and the adoption industry in particular, are the losers.
The destruction of international adoption has become the result of unethical adoption industry workers who take advantage of the local populations. Head-in-the-sand adoption industry workers who are desperate decision-makers set up quick adoption shops in countries, including our own, and in large child welfare organizations, like the troubled Child Protection Services in the US. As a result, “trafficking” is inevitable: to protect the children and stop the trafficking, adoption industry players that are involved must finally be held accountable.
The real disease – the one not addressed – is much more complex. It involves developing nations, communities without social welfare systems or resources to help families living in extreme poverty, suffering from illness, depression and hopelessness. Without education, economic strengthening, and access to medical care, particularly HIV/AIDS care, families become desperate and relinquish their children to orphanages. That is why we support the MOWCYA to focus on establishing a better child welfare system to take care of the rest of the 99 percent of children who are not potential victims of a misguided and uncontrollable adoption industry. All in the name of the children.
Trafficking has occurred in Georgia, Romania, Cambodia, Vietnam, Guatemala, Kyrgyztan, Kazakhstan, Nepal and now Ethiopia. Even though the adoption industry should be vilified, and demonized for their criminal activities in these countries, the governments, both foreign and US, still only listen to them when corruption becomes so egregious that it can no longer be ignored. And every time this happens there are original families torn apart as well as children and adoptive families trapped in the last steps of the adoption process or others almost there. If you look historically at all the countries that halted international adoption, you will find many fewer young children still in institutions than when international adoption was open, because the pipeline of corruption funneling these bogus orphans into orphanage was stopped as soon as the money dried up.. Neither the trafficking stories nor the closing of international adoption have anything to do with most children left to suffer for the rest of their lives because the international adoption industry is always in search of a particular sector of very young children, primarily girls, to meet the demands of the adoptive parents.
People close to adoption knew the decision in Ethiopia was coming. There was data generated from adoptive parents’ actual stories. These brave adoptive parents bucked the typical “don’t rock the boat and ruin it for everyone else” ethos shared by many prospective adoptive parents and had the courage to report that “irregularities, perhaps improprieties” were found in paperwork for children being referred for international adoption. For more details, go to the survey conducted by PEAR of adoptive parents at http://pear-now.blogspot.com/2010/10/pear-releases-results-of-ethiopia.html. The data within was further elaborated upon in a Voice of America article in December 2010, found at www.voanews.com/english/news/Under-Pressure-Ethiopia-Plans-Crackdown-on-Baby-Business-111848424.html .
But let’s get real. The best paperwork in the world is not going to fix a tragic social situation which is about the disintegration and dismantling of families due to poverty, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, natural disasters, conflict, and war. Yes, there is trafficking, and even if Ethiopia had the Hague accords implemented [it is nowhere close to implementing them and no announcements have been made suggesting that this will change], due to weak enforcement and punishment of the Hague, the same degree of trafficking will occur, and sadly we have all just spent millions of dollars on an agreement to protect orphans which has in effect accomplished nothing.
I think that there is a place for adoption both domestic and international, but I am not so foolish as to think that adoption is the solution for millions of social orphans whose families were so poor or ill that their desperate parents were driven to relinquish them to residential care facilities (also known as orphanages, institutions, children’s homes, hogars, leagans, dom rebyonka, mladost, crèches, etc.).
In the years that we have been tracking corruption and helping parents prepare for adoption, we have always believed that we should have been investing in the social infrastructure of the “sending” countries. If we had done this years ago when I first entered this field, we would have had more permanency, family preservation, group homes, kinship and non-related foster care, family-based care, and community-based solutions for children without parental care. And if we had managed this social infrastructure as a capacity/community building endeavor, we could have ended the need for international adoption at all, as kinship and local adoptions would have become so prevalent, foreign-born adoptive parents would rarely be needed.
In any case, here we are again….doesn’t anyone learn from the past? How childish of me to ask such a question! I can’t help myself because I have watched all of this trafficking unfold so many times in so many countries and here we are witnessing another adoption industry push to sweep it under the rug and downplay just how entrenched the corruption is. Thousands of kids will be left and parents will be stuck in limbo for months and even years…just look at each of the countries I noted above. You can go online and find the corruption and trafficking stories cached for years… as tragic as any earthquake or tsunami that leaves children stranded and alone. And how many resources are there for these families who were given no aid whatsoever by their adoption agencies after they adopted children with severe emotional issues, and whose family structure is ripped apart, with dissolutions and disruptions of adoptions and continuing misery for all. With no help in sight.
No one wins. There is bitterness and anger and the orphaned children in institutions and original families who have been deceived and had their children stolen are nameless to most of us. There are original families who don’t even have their children’s pictures and they all will suffer. I am privy to many stories of original parents waiting years to find their kids who were sent out to countries around the world…even herculean measures for these poor parents who are turned away when they tried to visit their already-adopted children several times a year in the orphanages not knowing what happened to their children and deprived of the ability to ever find out because the local powers-that-be and the adoption agencies had their paperwork changed….
In fact, this is a deplorable situation in which poor people continue to be used. President Clinton, we need a strategic plan for de-institutionalization and community building. We need to use creative ways to help kids have permanency.
President Clinton, please don’t let the adoption industry divert your attention from the corruption…..
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There, it is all fixed now! Thanks for the inspiration, Dr. Aronson!
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