Can you believe, can you imagine that Turkey is pursuing legal action against Sarah Ferguson for her “criminal” filming of children in horrific state-run institutions? Oh, my! Isn’t it Turkey that should be answering the world’s questions about their treatment of institutionalized children? Has any country voluntarily offered access to social orphans whose rights are being violated in this manner? It has always been the hidden camera that has brought the issue to life, and left countries sputtering to explain their complete lack of regard for the weakest and most vulnerable.

Now Sarah Ferguson cannot even travel, for fear of being extradited to Turkey to answer “charges”!! Isn’t this the new theme–don’t engage in “orphanage tourism”, as it might “violate the privacy of children”? Who do these national governments think they are fooling? Such double think–to expose the abusive conditions is to “violate the rights of children”! Well, I rather do not think so! It seems to me it is national policy that should be under urgent scrutiny.

We are not fooled, that is for sure.

See this CNN story providing a summary of the latest situation:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/16/world/europe/turkey-us-duchess-film/?hpt=wo_bn9

Should out to Sarah: We support your work, and your attempt to share the stories of abused children with the rest of the world! More on this later.

News today that Kyrgyzstan will be re-opening their program–but let’s watch and see how this unfolds.

http://www.rferl.org/content/kyrgyzstan_lifts_ban_on_international_adoptions/24094372.html

 Usually, after a shut down, if there is a resumption of adoption at all, it is slow and small in scale. This is–incredibly and ironically–in the name of “caution”!!

Read the story here of the little boy with severe cleft palate–wanted and cherished by a couple in the United States–but kept in his home country for two years so that….so that….what?!

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/include/print.asp?newsIdx=86561

Experts say the quota only puts more orphans on the waiting list and causes other negative side-effects, while having no substantial effect on boosting domestic adoption.

Local adoption agencies also argue that the quota deprives orphans of chances of finding new homes at an early age.

“What is actually happening now is that adoptive parents in other countries have to wait longer, up to almost a year, to adopt a child. The quota has simply increased the number of children on the adoption list,” said Hong Mi-kyung, official from Holt Children’s Services. “As children waiting for adoption grow older, adoptive parents and children experience more difficulties.”

She suggested that if the government maintains the adoption quota, it should exclude adoptions by Koreans living in other countries.
“I think the quota needs to be lifted for at least Koreans living abroad,” she said.

According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHSA), the adoption rate decreased to 27.5 percent in 2008 from 44.5 percent in 2000, with only 2,556 orphans out of 9,284 finding new homes. “The quota hurt the adoption rate, while the domestic adoption rate growth stagnated,” a KIHSA official said.

A Korean housewife living in the U.S., who has been waiting to adopt through a local agency, said abandoned children should be adopted as quickly as possible to help heal their “trauma” and better adjust to a new environment.

“A baby has been chosen for us to adopt, but an adoption agency said but we have to wait for a year just because the overseas quota is full this year. Does that make sense?” she said.

But the health ministry said adoption agencies should not accept applications from adoptive parents overseas when the quota is full to make it work in positive and desired ways.

The ministry also admitted that the quota led to the decrease of the adoption rate in general, but it is more important to find children a new home in their own country.

Like most other things relating to international adoption, this makes absolutely no sense–except from the perspective that international adoption should be limited and restriction as much as possible–whatever the true effects might be…..

When I look at The Nation, I remember how much I (in general) like it–informative on economic policy, progressive, original….But please….The Kathryn Joyce piece on international adoption (April 21, 2011) is unforgivable!

http://www.thenation.com/article/160096/evangelical-adoption-crusade

In “The Evangelical Adoption Crusade” Joyce seeks to associate international adoption with a radical Christian right plot to steal the children of the developing world from their rightful homes……Her piece is so profoundly flawed, so dismissive of the facts, that it is hard to know where to begin. Her analysis of the work of Craig Juntenen (whom she calls a “somewhat rogue” figure) is completely unfair!

While seemingly “progressive”, Joyce attempts to taint international adoption as a whole by linking it with a scary subculture of orphan-obsessed evangelicals. She provides no investigative data on the actual lives of children living out of family care around the world; she completely misreads the UNICEF perspective on international adoption; she uses a couple of anecdotes about particular people in the Christian orphan advocacy movement to stereotype and demean the motives of a vast array of social orphan advocates……

She can write what she likes, of course–but can’t The Nation do a better job than this? Isn’t the progressive case for adoption perfectly clear?

I will have more to write on this shortly….Suffice it to say here that by putting the “orphan crisis” in inverted commas, Joyce lets us know that she does not see one……Unlike Juntenen, I doubt Joyce has travelled anywhere to actually see children living out of parental care with her own eyes. They are there by the hundreds of thousands, they are too often facing very bleak futures filled with exploitation……What is Joyce’s “context”? Where does she derive her baseline information from?  For too many progressive writers, the international adoption story is simply an extension of other aspects of the culture wars…

Time for a major rethink on this!

It seems that in Japan, child abuse and family breakdown are contributing to a rise in the population of social orphans.  As with other parts of the world, but more surprisingly given the great wealth of Japan, we know little of a systematic nature about the numbers, the life conditions or the outcomes. It is well documented that there are few foster homes, and very few domestic adoptions.  The latest national crisis makes me all the more determined to go and study this vexing phenomenon.

But in the meantime, Nihon no katatachi yo–gambatte!!

But it is the time of year when I teach my children’s rights class about the worldwide cohort of  “children without families”–and each time, I am aghast at the deep and persistent neglect of this problem. It does not seem to interest “human rights lawyers” very much at all….How many children? Which institutions? How much neglect? Gendercide? Where is the “international law” that might protect them? And there is in fact only one form of protection, as human beings are slow growing, demanding and needy creature–a family.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/after-a-year-of-despair-haiti-orphans-get-a-fresh-start-in-france-2167514.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/the-baby-trade_b_800039.html

The piece is so fluffy and out of sync that there is little point in trying to refute it logically…..It is so clear that of the hundreds of thousands of children living out of parental care, only the tiniest fraction ever find their way to genuine family life–It is so clear that we cannot extrapolate from one story (such as the Korean one he describes) any broad themes about ICA as a “baby market.” It is so clear that using inflammatory terms like “baby market” may make for feel-good political catharsis, and does little to illuminate the true lives of these children…..But it is one more example of the autopilot journalism that animates our adoption debate–

http://terredeshommes.org/pdf/news/Nigel%20Cantwell_e.pdf

Cantwell goes after Kazakhstan here on its adoption policy (little wonder that KZ is now effectively closed to ICA)–hurling accusations at government officials and agencies–Making the broad statement that essentially all KZ children up to the age of 2 could be adopted domestically etc etc……

I have seen many, many “interventions” by Mr Cantwell on these issues–see his report on Ukraine and international adoption–same song–But never, ever a credible look from the inside at how many children are in the institutions–why–what happens to them–It doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it?

http://www.thenation.com/article/156796/save-children

The short opinion piece is, at least in my view, glib and superficial, and casts aspersions on the motivations of virtually everyone involved in international adoption. I have often said that of the hundreds of people I have known in the ICA context, none hold the view that these children as to be “rescued” by international adoption, or that ICA is the best way to procure healthy white infants. The latter proposition is in fact absurd. I have long held the view that domestic adoption is hampered–and severely so–by lack of clear information for the public about the modes and forms of domestic adoption. In the present informational vacuum, it is so easy to make sweeping statements about international adoption as trafficking–Personally, I would have expected something more insightful from Professor Williams.