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Togo suspends child adoption

Mon, 2008-02-11 21:42 - Niels

From: Mathaba

Togo has decided to suspend child adoption on Thursday due to violations in the adoption process.

An official release issued on Friday in the capital Lome said the decision was taken during a meeting of ministers' council aimed at saving the lives and interests of the Togolese children, whose security is endangered during the process.

The Togolese Minister of Social Action and Minister of Justice explained that adoption procedures were overlooked in spite of the children's law, where courts made judgment in adoption on the basis of child abandonment without conducting a social inquiry.

The government authorized the two ministers to clarify legal procedures for children's law, to settle adoption within Togo in the interest of parties outside the country, in addition to set up a better mechanism to control the procedures.

Comments

Tue, 2008-02-12 13:44 — Kerry

Interesting...

How is it a small "unknown" area in Africa sees the importance of violations made during the adoption process, but the bigger more industrialized areas of the world won't?

Tue, 2008-02-12 13:59 — Niels

suspension

I guess that's because their ass is on the line and not ours. It's their children that get taken away not ours. Besides Togo is by far not the first to suspend adoption, over the last few years at least the following countries have done the same:

  • Russia
  • Romania
  • Guatemala
  • Vietnam
  • Cambodia
  • Congo
  • Ukraine
  • Nepal
  • Azerbaijan

In most cases the suspension of adoption didn't last very long, due to political pressure from the rich import countries.

Tue, 2008-02-12 14:04 — Kerry

Trash to Treasure

I can't help but see this child-trade as a loss-gains scenario that revolves around future ecominics.  Am I wrong?

Tue, 2008-02-12 14:20 — Niels

It's worse than that

It is even worse than that, because there is no way the market for infants will ever saturate. The demand for babies is much bigger than the supply of babies, while the demand will be growing and the supply will become less and less. That will only increase the pressure on the market, causing the price to go up and increase the the risk of coercion and illegal practices.

Tue, 2008-02-12 14:30 — Kerry

Isn't it ironic...

perhaps the Madonna-Move is making Africa more aware of their "natural resources", and the people are realizing the long-term effects of losing their own people to strangers in different lands?

Tue, 2008-02-12 14:57 — Niels

Africa

I believe Africa will become the focal point for adoption in the near future. Most (South) East Asian countries are economically catching up with rich western countries, Eastern European countries have become part of the EU, so those countries will start looking after their own children and stop exporting them. China is still the largest child-exporting country in the world, but it won't take all that long before that country is the leading nation in the world. I bet once #1, and probably long before that, the Chinese will stop their current policies. In the mean time South America is becoming less and less dependent on the USA, most of them already having closed their borders for adoption.

That leaves Africa as the only growing market. Many white people will not want to adopt black children, but there certainly is a growing affluent black population in the USA, who will want to adopt.

Sun, 2008-03-02 16:23 — Lulu

Martket shifting to Africa

Indeed, Niels, you are so right. In a recent report written for the Dutch Minister of Justice, Professor Paul van Vlaardingenbroek, said the same: adoption is a market currently moving to Africa.

And yes, most countries do not suspend adoptions for very long.The pressure to re-open is always horrendous. Political pressure, economic pressure. And of course the hurdle of usual international adoption experts that immediately volunteers to draft new adoption laws. Apparently they think that as international adoption is about the children of the world, adoptions need to be written by the international community and not by local civil servants... One wonders.

The only country that recently withstood this pressure: Romania

And as for Africa, mostly thanks to the do-gooders of Zoe's Arche, a number of African countries has rencently closed down:

LIBERIA, ZAMBIA, CONGO, TOGO. LESOTHO was closed already

In fact the only African country where it is booming business at the moment is ETHOPIA.

With Vietnam boiling up to closure - and Guata still bing a mess - as well as Haiti, everone is now running towards Ethiopia.  Á situation totally out of hand...

Mon, 2008-03-03 18:02 — Niels

Ethiopia

The fact the situation is going out of hand can easily be seen by this fragment from a recent news article:

Children's Home Society & Family Services (CHSFS), a global child welfare organization, announces another year of growth in the number of children placed into permanent homes through its adoption services: 843 children from 13 countries, including 88 from the U.S. Despite much-publicized delays and eligibility changes in prominent adoption programs such as China, Russia and Guatemala, CHSFS' international adoption placement numbers rose and have risen for the past 3 years. Much of the growth is attributed to the rapid rise of the Ethiopia program, CHSFS' fastest-growing program in its 119 years of providing adoption services.

If the Ethiopian program  is even beating the Romanian one in growth-rate, things are seriously wrong in that East African country.

Mon, 2008-03-03 20:58 — Hilary

Orphans with parents

Oh yes, very wrong indeed. So wrong that the US State Department has warned that the children may not qualify for an ORPHAN VISA (only one parent - that's how Angelina Jolie got her orphan visa).

But don't worry, in that case Agencies have a creative solution.

DO NOT TALK TO THE BIRTH FAMILIES

Just pretend they are orphans

ETHIOPIA: Warning against pre-adoption birthparent contact.
In response to a letter from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, circulated to adoption agencies in January, some agencies have announced they will no longer facilitate birth family contact. The letter emphasized the fact that, under U.S. immigration law, a child must meet stringent requirements in order to qualify as an “orphan” by virtue of abandonment.

 

Mon, 2008-03-03 21:18 — Kerry

Orphaned without protection

"Stringent requirements"?  Take a look at how stringent family protection has become:

Why were so many children in care on Jersey?

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/

It is not just the political background to the Jersey scandal that needs to be understood. There is an economic background too.

When Ceaucescu's regime fell in Romania it was revealed that thousands of children were suffering in primitive orphanages. It took a while for people to ask why there were so many orphans there. When they did, it turned out that may of them were not orphans at all.

As an Observer article explained last year:

The dictatorship encouraged breeding to staff state-controlled industries. Contraception and abortion were not available. Parents travelling to towns to find work were forced to stay in dormitories and leave their children behind in state care. A 1954 law described children as the property of the state rather than of their families.

Ceausescu also had a fascist streak. Any child who was less than physically or mentally perfect was immediately taken away and put in a closed institution where they couldn't be seen. A hair lip brought a life sentence.

Equally, it has always concerned me that there is never any shortage of inmates at the Bonkers' Home for Well-Behaved Orphans. Is there something about Rutland that the old brute has not told me?

Writing in today's Daily Telegraph Gordon Rayner raises a similar question about Jersey

One more disturbing question presents itself in the light of the child abuse scandal: just why, on a such a small and supposedly idyllic island, did so many hundreds of children end up in care homes?

The answer lies in another little-publicised fact about Jersey - its unexpectedly high level of poverty, which brings with it the sort of social problems that lead to children being taken into care.

Although Jersey, with its £250 billion financial industry, has the second-highest gross domestic product per capita in Europe, the island's wealth is largely held by the privileged few. Some 13,000 people - more than one in seven - live in social rental properties, Jersey's equivalent of council houses, and half of all households suffer from one or more of the internationally recognised measures for relative poverty.

The crumbling 1960s council estates of St Helier are testament to the years of neglect. Rusting cars rot on rubbish-strewn drives, windows have bedsheets for curtains and the paint is peeling off walls and doorframes. "This place is run by the finance industry for the finance industry," says one resident. "Anyone else just doesn't count."

Even if the eventual discoveries do not substantiate the most Grand Guignol aspects of the story we are being told at the moment, this week's events show the need for fundamental reform of the governance of the island.

Finally, three radical voices from Jersey:

Mon, 2008-03-03 22:35 — blanche

the home advantage

i was reading about the findings of the torture chamber, (below), and i can't help but think how much better it is to be part of a group that's being abused, than being alone in the fight and freight of an attacker.  maybe there's no power behind the numb numbers of those who have been robbed, but there's understanding of what happens when you reach that landing.

it goes beyond words.  it becomes a smell.  death could not be any sweeter.

Jersey’s Deputy Police Chief Lenny Harper said the “home made” entrance through floorboards, which was uncovered yesterday, appeared to provide further corroboration of victims’ claims.

Mr Harper said: “We have uncovered what we have been referring to as a trap door. It’s a space in the floorboards, the size and location corroborates what (witnesses) have been telling us. It’s a home-made entrance in the floor above the cellar.

“This is something we are talking about regarding alleged offences committed at the home.”

Mr Harper would not specify whether the trapdoor led directly to one of the cellars.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/29/njersey229.xml

does it matter where the door leads?  it was the portal into hell.  i'm glad it was found, but there are so many more that have been left to be forgotten.