Cross-country adoption: A call to action

Notre Dame Law Review

Volumn 73, Issue 5, 1998, Pages 1239-1248

  D'Amato, Anthony ^a  

^a NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 11844280392     PISSN: 07453515     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. 20/20 (ABC television broadcast, October, 1990).
2. Chuck Sudetic, Plataresti Journal - The Castoff Children: Who's to Give Them Love?, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 11, 1991, at 28.
3. Mary Battiata, A Ceausescu Legacy: Warehouses for Children, WASH. POST, June 7, 1990, at A1.
4. Michael Dobbs, Dictator's Dream Took Harsh Toll, WASH. POST, Jan. 5, 1990, at A1.
5. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Nov. 20, 1989, 28 I.L.M. 1448.
6. Id. at 1460.
7. Id. at 1457.
8. Id. at 1464.
9. Why "special protection"? Why suggest that the state has to go out of its way to help such a child? Why not put it in terms of a state's legal obligation to the child?
10. Why such deference to national laws? What if the national laws are inadequate?
11. Why are these just suggestions for a state's "consideration"? And why accord such prominence to the child's cultural background? Such deference would invite bureaucrats, who will be looking at this treaty as their marching orders, to put cultural factors ahead of immediate adoption by a family that wants the child. And by the time they identify, sort out, and analyze all these imponderable cultural factors, the child may be too old for a family to want to go ahead with the adoption.
12. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Nov. 20, 1989, 28 I.L.M. 1448, 1464.
13. Note the premise of this remarkable provision: we have a child who cannot in any suitable manner be cared for, and cannot be placed in a foster or an adoptive family. What, then, is the conclusion? What do we do for such a child? We simply "recognize" that intercountry adoption "may be considered as an alternative means"! Not send the child abroad immediately, but simply think about doing so.
14. But if national adoption is not available, then why compare an intercountry adoption that is available to the standards of adoption in the child's own country? Of course, there must be some regard for safeguards and standards. But putting it in terms of equivalence may result in impeding the intercountry adoption process.
15. As of today, only two countries have not ratified the Convention. The ratifying countries include the Vatican, Togoland, Western Samoa and the Marshall Islands, Algeria and Andorra, Botswanna and Burkina, Zaire, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Can you guess the two countries that have not ratified the Rights of the Child Convention? One is Somalia. Somalia is the only country in the world without a government, and without a government Somalia cannot ratify anything. The other country is the United States of America.
16. Hague Conference on Private International Law: Final Act of the Seventeenth Session, Including the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, May 29, 1993, 32 I.L.M. 1134.
17. This compares with an average cost of about $13,000 for domestic adoptions.
18. See ELIZABETH BARTHOLET, FAMILY BONDS: ADOPTION AND THE POLITICS OF PARENTING (1993), and the excerpt from her book on intercountry adoption in INTERNATIONAL LAW ANTHOLOGY 329 (Anthony D'Amato ed., 1994).
19. See ELIZABETH BARTHOLET, FAMILY BONDS: ADOPTION AND THE POLITICS OF PARENTING (1993), and the excerpt from her book on intercountry adoption in INTERNATIONAL LAW ANTHOLOGY 329 (Anthony D'Amato ed., 1994).
20. Airlines would be fairly easy to persuade. Imagine an airline turning down such a request - the negative publicity would be overwhelming.