Questions Linger About Nepal

We have reported about issues with international adoption and Nepal a number of times. This WBUR/NPR report looks again at the halt to Nepal to US adoptions.

There are two points about international adoption corruption that need to be understood:

(1) Which children are being placed for international adoption? Of course there are children in need in every country. Many are being taken care of poorly and not all child separations with the original family are corrupt. When you start to see the pattern of the adoption corruption issues, you start to understand that which children are being placed does not always correlate with which children are in the direst need of an adoptive family. That is the case in Nepal.

(2) Granting an immigration visa is NOT the same as proving the adoption process is clean or not corrupt. Too many assumptions are made about the role of the US Embassy and DOS and who is actually conducting the investigations into alleged fraud.

This story is about Dee Dee Milton who ” ended up spending five months living in Nepal, fighting for the right to bring her 4-year-old adopted daughter, Bina, home.” She still asks why the DOS held up her adoption especially in light of their subsequent approvals of most of the pipeline cases.

“Janice Jacobs says she understands Milton’s frustration. She’s the assistant secretary of State for Consular Affairs. But Jacobs argues Nepal’s child adoption system isn’t trustworthy.

“They estimate — the NGOs with a lot of on-the-ground experience — that perhaps 10 percent of the children who turn up as orphans are in fact abandoned,” Jacobs said.

The State Department worries as many as 90 percent of children in Nepalese orphanages may have been sold by a child trafficker under false pretenses. ”

The article states :”But Milton is still skeptical. If that’s the case, she asks, why didn’t the U.S. government find more fraud in the 66 cases it reviewed? All but one have been cleared for visas.”

Ms. Milton, refer to our second point about who is conducting the investigation and what visa granting doesn’t prove.

Revere Woman Questions Frustrating Nepalese Adoption, Fraud Claims
[WBUR 5/11/11 by Monica Brady-Myerov]

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