Adoption advocates say international laws designed to protect children are denying many the chance of a loving home, despite concerns from academics that intercountry adoption encourages child trafficking.
The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children was enacted in 1993 to prevent child trafficking and abduction. Countries who are party to the convention must try to house children with their birth family or inside the child’s country of origin before adoption is considered. Hague-compliant nations are also required to establish a central authority to oversee the movement of children in and out of their territory.
Australia is among 95 contracting states to the agreement, which came into effect here in 1998. But growing support for the convention worldwide has seen the number of intercountry adoptions in Australia plummet, as more countries commit to placing adoptees at home.
Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing (AIHW) shows overseas adoptions decreased by nearly 75 percent in the decade since 2005. In 2014, only 114 children born overseas were re-homed in Australia. That pattern is repeated around the world.
At the same time, the average wait time for prospective parents to receive a child has ballooned to five years, causing frustration among those hoping to welcome a child from overseas.
Andrea Grant, a member of adoption advocacy group FACTS, is concerned by the hostile adoption landscape and says the Hague Convention has meant children who might otherwise be rehomed overseas have been left to languish in orphanages.
“I certainly want children to come into the process because they’ve been abandoned, not because a pregnant girl has been forced to give up her child or the child has been taken,” Ms Grant says.
“But to shut everything down so no children have a chance of being adopted by a family and looked after is also horrible.”
In the same year Australia signed the convention, Ms Grant and husband Jim adopted their son, Julian, from the Hogar Vida Nueva orphanage in Guatemala City, Guatemala. He was one year old.
But when Guatemala moved to comply with the Hague convention in 2008, adoptions out of Guatemala all but ceased.
Ms Grant says the effect was devastating for Hogar Vida Nueva’s six remaining children.
“They can’t be placed. They’ve just been in limbo ever since,” Ms Grant says.
Mr Grant’s business is now sending money each month to the children’s carer, Marta, something the couple have committed to do until the children come of age.
Griffith university senior lecturer in social work Dr Patricia Fronek says although the Hague convention is the best available tool to protect children, it is imperfect.
She says the convention welcomes parties who are not entirely compliant with its protocols, including Guatemala.
“Guatemala is so rife with corruption and trafficking has been a problem ever since adoption started. It’s a very, very vulnerable population,” Dr Fronek says.
She also says powerful lobby groups in western nations like the US use the convention as a pro-adoption tool, not an anti-trafficking tool.
According to Dr Fronek, these countries cite the negative effects of institutionalisation on young people as reason for adoptions to continue. In doing so, the convention’s subsidiarity principle, which requires the child’s family be traced, is often disregarded.
“What is absolutely clear is that children’s homes start to fuel the adoption market.
“The more I learn and study about it, the more I have reservations,” Dr Fronek says.
Adoptions into the US are certainly quicker. Last year, American adoptions took an average of just 14 months, 45 months less than the average Australian wait time.
This doesn’t surprise Ms Grant, who says in her experience, Australia adheres to the law in a “dogmatic” fashion.
“It seems as though Australia and the social workers who are involved in the program take a very strict interpretation of those rules and it has become increasingly so as time’s gone on.
“I don’t think there’s the political will to expedite this process.”
