Uganda: Foreigners Exploiting Loophole to Adopt UPDATED

“Uganda MPs have raised fresh concerns that hundreds of children have left the country through “dubious circumstances” as a result of foreigners working with local lawyers to exploit a loophole in the law, allowing them to be adopted.

Last September, an official report said a boom in Uganda’s “international adoption industry” had led to some children who were not even orphans being taken into care for adoption or child sponsorship schemes.

A parliamentary committee investigating illegal adoptions has now heard that more than 120 children left the East African country last year alone, despite some foreigners being granted adoption orders not meeting criteria, and many of the so-called orphans having family.

“The children who foreigners are calling orphans are not actually orphans,” Pius Bigirimana, permanent secretary in the gender ministry, was quoted as saying by the Daily Monitor newspaper.

“We have put in place an inter-ministerial team to stop illegal adoptions.”

He claimed in some cases children were leaving the country and having their organs removed.

Bigirimana also warned that orphanages had been commercialised, and that “80 percent of children in them are not orphans”.

Meanwhile, the law firm of Uganda’s former attorney general Peter Nyombi, Nyombi and Company Advocates, was named as taking advantage of a loophole in the Children’s Act to process adoptions.

The company was described as a “core player” in the industry, Ugandan media reports said.

Nyombi did not respond to the claims, according to Ugandan papers, but is due to appear before the committee alongside other lawyers on Friday.

Another legislator, Alice Alaso, asked for the details of the lawyers involved in illegal adoptions, and a list of licensed orphanages, to be provided to the committee.

She said law firms were raking in money “exporting thousands of children without a guarantee of their safety,” the New Vision reported.

According to officials, many adoptions are taking place under the pretext of legal guardianship rather than full adoptions, which has tighter legal requirements.

The committee has given Bigirimana two months to implement regulations to close loopholes in the law.

“Law firms sadly see obtaining legal guardianship orders for their clients, who are predominately from the USA, as ‘business’,” a worker with a Ugandan child’s rights NGO told AFP.

“We hear that some law firms charge up to $15,000.”

Uganda, one of the world’s poorest countries, is home to approximately 2.4 million orphans, about half of whom lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.

In 2012 the Addis Ababa-based African Child Policy Forum described Africa as “new frontier for inter-country adoption” after countries including China, Russia, Romania and Ukraine tightened their rules on overseas adoption.

Uganda, like most African nations, is not party to the Hague Convention — which provides safeguards to ensure children are not adopted illegally.”

Foreigners exploiting law loophole to adopt, say Ugandan MPs[Yahoo 5/27/15 by AFP]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

 

Update:”U gandan families have been bribed, tricked or coerced into giving up their children to U.S. citizens and other foreigners for adoption, a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation has found.

Leaked documents, court data and a series of exclusive interviews with officials, whistleblowers, victims and prospective adoptive parents has revealed:

– a culture of corruption in which children’s birth histories are at times manipulated to make them appear as orphans when they are not

– a lucrative industry in which lawyers acting on behalf of foreign applicants receive large payments

– a mushrooming network of unregistered childcare institutions through which children are primed for adoption

– an absence of reliable court data to counteract allegations of negligence or fraud by probation officers involved in the adoption process

Across Uganda church-backed orphanages and private child care institutions are springing up.

“Fifteen years ago there were just two dozen orphanages, now there are as many as 400 such institutions,” said Stella Ayo-Odongo, executive director of the Uganda Child Rights NGO Network.

“But this is steeped in problems. Intercountry adoptions constitute a booming industry in which child traffickers are profiteering,” she said.

According to Ugandan law, foreigners are required to spend at least three years in the country before adopting, but they can acquire a legal guardianship days after arriving and complete the process back home.

Data from the U.S. State Department shows that 201 children were adopted from Uganda by U.S. citizens in 2013/2014, making it the third biggest source country in Africa. In all, Americans adopted 6,441 children from around the world last year.

Uganda’s parliament is expected to pass tighter legislation that would ban legal guardianships, with a view to signing an international treaty, the Hague Adoption Convention, but corruption and bureaucracy have stalled the process, critics say.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia, two of the biggest source countries for adopted African children last year, have taken steps to restrict overseas applications.

“Uganda must ratify the Hague Adoption Convention urgently,” said Ayo-Odongo. “It was previously not an issue, but now, with levels of child trafficking at such a high level, it should be a priority.”

Ugandan children regularly pass through Kampala’s Entebbe international airport.

On a given day they can be seen hand-in-hand with white adoptive parents at the departure gate.

Many of these adoptions will lead to successful unions between the child and his or her adoptive parents.

But others will never make it this far.

In Uganda, a lack of available documents makes it impossible to determine how many adoptions involve fraud, but four government officials told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the problem was widespread.

“Some lawyers lie about the birth history of the child,” said Stella Ogwang, an official in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, which oversees child welfare.

Another senior government official, who did not want to be named, described Uganda’s adoption system as “a racket”.

One of the lawyers known for handling intercountry adoption cases denied involvement in fraud, saying that the cases she handled involved orphans abandoned by their families.

Another lawyer, Peter Nyombi, said he was not aware of any fraud in the adoption cases he handled.

“We carry out extensive investigations into the background of the children,” said Nyombi, who is a former attorney general.

 

BIRTH HISTORY

Data shows that a large proportion of the children put forward for adoption have surviving relatives.

A leaked study into foreign adoptions in Uganda, overseen by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, found only a fifth of all adopted children it surveyed were orphans who had lost both parents.

The report, funded by the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF and yet to be published, also found that biological parents and relatives gave up their children in the belief they would receive financial incentives from adoptive parents and children’s homes.

Many of them, the report finds, come to learn that their child’s identity has been changed fraudulently while in the institution, without their knowledge.

The report’s author, Hope Among, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that securing access to court files took several months and certain files were withheld by the judiciary.

A court registrar, Muse Musimbi, declined to say why this was the case and said he could only discuss the matter with the court files in front of him.

“Before an application [for guardianship] comes to court, the child’s identity may have been changed several times by the lawyers or those acting for them in the child care institutions,” said the Ministry of Gender and Labour’s Ogwang.

Intercountry adoption is widely believed to be a lucrative business. Officials estimate a Ugandan lawyer can earn $30,000 during the adoption process.

Two lawyers involved in the process refused to comment on their earnings. Another lawyer, who did not want to be named, said he earns $4,000 for each case he handles.

Peter Nyombi said he earned less than $10,000 per legal guardianship.

“Thirty thousand dollars? I would be a very rich man if I were charging that amount,” said Nyombi, laughing.

Uganda’s per capita GNI (Gross National Income) was $600 in 2013, according to the World Bank, well below the average for sub-Saharan Africa.

 

‘FRAUD’

A former High Court registrar said that some probation officers, on instruction from lawyers, were in the habit of fraudulently copying and pasting information from old documents to ensure the application would be rubber stamped.

“Some of our lawyers have gone to the extent of confusing parents and relatives of the victims to present forged information. They tell the parents to lie, to pretend to be dead, in return for small payments,” said Moses Binonga, coordinator of the anti-human trafficking task force at Uganda’s Interior Ministry.

The task of protecting children is made harder by the high levels of deprivation.

Twenty-four percent of Ugandan children under five live in extreme poverty, according to a 2014 UNICEF report.

One lawyer involved in the adoption process said this makes determining a child’s origins all the harder.

“Many of the children who are the subject of guardianship come from very disadvantaged backgrounds … where members of the family may not be educated and have records on the dates of birth or death of a parent,” said the lawyer, who did not want to be named.

Staff at some of Kampala’s child care institutions told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that many of the children are abandoned by poor family members who say they can no longer afford to care for them.

It was in one children’s home that a former social worker, who wishes to remain anonymous, first encountered what he believes was fraud.

He lost his job after accusing colleagues of falsifying documents in the files of three children.

“It was the job of the social worker to document the background of a child,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Sometimes my colleagues would change those files, so that the children could be sent out [for adoption by foreigners].”

On one occasion the social worker said he noticed paperwork showing that the three children had surviving biological parents or relatives. He believes the documents were removed while his back was turned.

“When I got back from holiday, the three children were gone,” he said.

The former employee said he tried to raise the alarm.

“The probation officers told me it was too late to intervene. That was when I realised I had made enemies inside the orphanage,” he said.

 

‘TRAFFICKING’

Moses Binonga, from the anti-trafficking task force, said corruption in the adoption system is widespread, but believes the American system is at fault.

“There are cases where we have discovered fraud in the adoption process. When we have complained to the U.S. government they have not returned those children [from America]; they say they are American citizens and cannot be brought back,” Binonga said.

“It makes us think there is a hidden agenda. The Americans are quiet on this,” he said, adding that the current system exposes children to child trafficking.

An official from the U.S. State Department said this was an “imprecise and misleading” description, because trafficking involved “intent to ultimately exploit the victim.”

But campaigners also point to a lack of transparency or follow-up of cases of intercountry adoptions which do not work out.

U.S. government figures for 2013/2014 show 91 out of 6,441 children adopted from overseas were abandoned or relinquished by their adoptive parents in America, ending up in state custody.

The Dutch government suspended intercountry adoptions from Uganda in 2012, because of what it perceived to be a lack of transparency in the procedure.

The U.S. State Department said it is not considering a ban on intercountry adoptions from Uganda.

“The Department of State believes intercountry adoption can provide permanent, loving homes to children in need when children cannot be cared for in their country of birth,” the State Department official said.

 

U.S. AGENCIES

More than 200 U.S.-based adoption agencies, of which a number work in Uganda, assist American applicants to complete adoptions in their home state, but in a number of cases, the process stalls.

“America’s regulatory approach has proven short-sighted, for the failure to provide sufficient safeguards has created a system designed and destined to fail,” says David Smolin, Professor of Law at Samford University, Alabama.

“Under this ‘slash and burn adoption’ … too many adoption agencies with too much money to spend descend upon vulnerable developing nations, leading to abusive practices, corruption, scandals, and then closures,” Smolin said.

He speaks from experience.

Smolin adopted two girls from India in 1998 only to find they had been kidnapped by an orphanage and their mother was searching for them.

He says the problem is perpetuated by the fact that “adoptive parents are sometimes reluctant to report abusive practices to the State Department, based on fears of their agency, peer pressure from the adoption community, and fears that the child might be forcibly sent back”.

Adoption agencies take a different view.

“Legal guardianships are recognised by the United States, they are recognised by its embassy in Uganda, so we are thinking if there is an opportunity to save the children, we can,” said Tendai Masiriri, vice president, Bethany Christian Services adoption agency, which has operated in Uganda since 2011.

“Children are suffering in orphanages, right?” he said.

Those involved in Uganda’s child welfare reforms blame the orphanages for what they see as their failure to investigate cases.

“Orphanages have their own agenda. They make up stories about children and cannot always verify information because they are not involved from the outset,” said Ogwang of the Gender and Labour Ministry.

Ogwang, an opponent of intercountry adoptions, believes the state shares responsibility for what she sees as deep seated corruption.

“The problem is with the system, you cannot blame the biological parents.””

Fraud and deceit at the heart of Uganda adoptions to United States
[Daily Mail 5/28/15 by Tom Esslemont and Katy Migiro]

“When Emily and Matt Knudsen began the lengthy process of adopting a child from Africa, they believed they would be saving an orphan in distress.

“Our biggest desire was to meet a need, to adopt a child who truly had no other options,” said Emily, at the family’s home near San Francisco, California.

Motivated by their Christian faith, the couple signed up with one of more than 200 adoption agencies specializing in matching Americans with children in developing countries.

The agency, Little Miracles, told them about Uganda, where faith-based orphanages and child care institutions have proliferated amid rampant poverty.

The agency, which says it has carried out 31 successful international adoptions of Ugandan children, presented the couple with opportunities to help African children orphaned by, and infected with, HIV.

“We prayed and researched what we thought we could handle and what kind of special needs we thought we were equipped to care for,” said full-time mother Emily, 33.

“After lots of research we knew how manageable HIV could be – especially in the U.S.” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in emailed comments.

However, after receiving details about the first child from the agency, the Knudsens quickly became skeptical.

“We ultimately had to say no to [the first] referral, [a baby girl] because we didn’t seem to think the information we got matched up,” Emily said.

The couple also had to decline the second child they were offered because a member of the child’s biological family in Uganda came forward to protest.

The third referral the Knudsens were matched with was a 2-year-old HIV-positive boy, who was in a children’s home.

“We were told that he was from a part of the country that was hard to travel to, that his family was poor and could not afford to care for [the boy],” said Emily.

In its response, Little Miracles (LMI) denied the allegations, adding that client confidentiality prevented it from discussing the details of specific cases.

“The first child referred to [the Knudsens] was successfully and without issue adopted subsequently by [another] family,” said Lori Scott, executive director of Little Miracles.

Little Miracles said it was unable to disclose the details of the second case, adding it had provided the Knudsens with full information.

After signing the contract with the agency for the third attempt to adopt, the Knudsens said they paid $15,000 in adoption fees. As they received more information about the boy’s background, they detected inconsistencies.

“This is false,” said Little Miracles’ Scott, adding that the agency had a record of the payments it received. “We do not know where this number originates but this is absolutely not the amount paid to LMI for services,” she said.

ROAD BLOCKS

“Many facts presented by the agency differed from what ended up being true, the most important one being that the boy’s mother actually, desperately, wanted to keep her son,” Emily Knudsen said.

“The biggest thing that got our wheels turning was when [the agency] told us that ‘for reasons they couldn’t get into’ our adoption process was going to be on hold for a while,” she said.

“[Little Miracles] told us they had hit some road blocks. When I asked further questions they wouldn’t give any straight answers,” said Emily Knudsen.

Scott denied the adoption was ever put ‘on hold’ and said all queries raised by the family were documented and answered.

“The child was no longer eligible for placement, due to circumstances we cannot discuss due to confidentiality,” she said.

“We have no context as to what the family is referencing here. We had regular, documented communication with the family until they requested to close out their case with LMI,” said Scott.

The Knudsens said some of the money they paid went to the lawyer working on behalf of the agency in Uganda.

The lawyer, Dorah Mirembe, “basically took our money and didn’t pay us back anything,” Emily said.

Mirembe told the Thomson Reuters Foundation she was paid $2,300. “We had done part of our work,” she said.

“[Dorah Mirembe] was essentially helping us adopt a child who had been trafficked and should never have been placed for adoption,” said Emily.

Disputing this, Scott said “birth parents do have a right to change their mind, within the laws of that country, for whatever reason.”

Denying trafficking was an issue in this case, Mirembe said all the paperwork, including a child welfare report, was in place when she met the birth parents of the child.

“I talked to them about the intended placement for their child and explained to them the implications of legal guardianship,” she said, adding this was a mandatory procedure.

“This particular family (mother and father) seemed to know the implications of the intended placement,” said Mirembe.

INVESTIGATOR

At this stage the Knudsens decided they couldn’t continue with the adoption process and hired an investigator in Uganda to help reunite the boy with his biological mother.

“Of course, the agency was livid. They threatened us, telling us they wouldn’t work with us any more and wouldn’t pay us back any of our fees,” Emily said.

Scott said Little Miracles’ documentation does not show that it was ‘livid’ about the Knudsens’ withdrawal.

“We received an email with their decision, we confirmed receipt of their email, and wrote back that we would close out their case,” said Scott.

The Knudsens said Little Miracles mainly communicated with them by phone.

The family, who have four children, two of whom are adopted from Guatemala, said they have learned much with the benefit of hindsight.

“At the end of the day adoption is a lucrative business,” said Emily Knudsen.

“It is sad that people have corrupted the adoption world and made it all about themselves,” she said.

Scott said families are informed of the risks involved in adoption. “If a biological relative … makes a decision that they no longer wish to continue an adoption plan for their child, this will take precedence over the adoption process,” she added.

Emily and Matt Knudsen said they continue to support the Ugandan boy and his mother. They say there needs to be more emphasis on assisting families, rather than intercountry adoption.

“There are many families who even act in God’s name … who want that cute little black baby, even at the expense of tearing a birth family apart,” Emily said.

“That’s why I think there needs to be greater checks and balances. I would never want this to happen to another family – neither the one adopting nor the birth family,” she said.”

Dream of Adopting Child from Africa Becomes Nightmare for Couple[Yahoo 5/28/15 by Tom Esselmont]