Adopting children from Third World countries: Is it right?

Truly one of the greatest gifts that any couple can have is a child. As a father of two daughters, I can attest to the feeling of joy that a parent has when children come into our lives. But unfortunately, there are many couples who cannot conceive and for this reason, they desperately search for other means of having children; if not their own, then by adoption.

People who are interested in adoption as a way to start or grow a family are continually looking for adoption options. Adoption is obviously not a way to save, what some have termed, a ‘lost generation’, but it is a way to create a loving bond between parents and children from any part of the world that supports international adoption.

The first place to look for ready-made children is in orphanages in one’s own country. These homeless children need families that will love and care for them. However, the number of street children in the urban centers of the developing world has exploded in the past two decades and child homelessness has now spread to parts of Africa and Latin America where it had previously been uncommon. They too need families to care for them and love them.

If certain parts of Africa, the parents have died from AIDS and their offspring are often left to fend for themselves. The United Nations estimates 18 million African children will have lost a parent to AIDS by 2010.

In Nairobi, Kenya, there are between 10 thousand to 30 thousand street children wandering about in that city alone. No matter what efforts are made on their behalf, most if not all of them will never know what family life is like as a child. That is a sad commentary of our times no matter which way you look at it.

Removing children from the streets and placing them in orphanages, group homes or in rural farms to foster opportunities for work, schooling, and rehabilitation may be a temporary solution but it is obviously not an ideal solution. The ideal solution would be that each child has a mother and father to look after them, love them and help them grow up into adulthood.

There are decent, caring individuals who have chosen to go to Africa and other countries with the sole purpose of adopting a child. Why they first didn’t look in the orphanages and group homes in their own country is beyond my understanding. What is their motive in adopting a black child from Africa; especially when their own race is white? Perhaps they feel that if they are white and they adopt a white child from Africa, people will say they are racist.

Madonna’s adoption of a black boy and her attempt at adopting a black girl, both from Africa is a one that is not uncommon. Westerners are increasingly seeking to bring home children from Africa as traditional sources like China and Russia cut back on adoptions by foreigners. The rising number of adoptions from Africa; particularly by Americans in Ethiopia, comes as the AIDS epidemic ravaging the continent leaves more orphans in impoverished countries and surviving relatives are unable to care for them.

There is no question that these children have to be cared for but in using Nairobi as an example, ask yourself this question. How will adopting a hundred street children in that city help the remaining thousands upon thousands of homeless children left behind?

Estimates in the United States are that it would cost approximately $120,000 to raise one child from birth to the age of 17. That amounts to around $7,060 a year. How could that $7,060 each year be used to help, for example, the street children in Nairobi?

The money would be better spent bringing relief to the thousands of homeless children in need than spending the money for the need of those who are adopted by those from developed countries.

One single contribution of $30 provides a full month's worth of life-saving medication to an HIV positive child. With $7,000, it will fill a 40-foot container of much-needed food, hygiene kits, milk, and medical supplies to orphanages caring for the children.

In the developing countries, education is viewed as a prominent public policy issue, involving the interplay of national budget allocation and foreign assistance. In Kenya, education is considered the pillar of all development activities. Obviously street children who are living hand to mouth day after day are growing up to be uneducated adults who will then continue living hand to mouth day after day.

There are organizations that sponsor volunteers to go to Kenya at their own expense and then they pay an additional $1,900 for their transportation in Mombassa, Kenya, housing and food for 10 weeks of service to work with homeless children.

This brings me back to those people from developing countries who want to adopt homeless children living in Africa. But are some of them really homeless?

Many adoption agencies and child rights activists argue it is preferable for children to be taken care of by relatives in their communities, with foreign adoptions allowed only as a last resort. Others say that isn't always realistic. It may not be realistic if there are no relatives in a position to care for the children but what about those relatives who can care for the orphans, especially of they are given some financial support? AIDS has killed many of those in extended families who might once have cared for children in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa, thereby leaving orphans in the hands of elderly grandparents, older siblings, strained orphanages; or alternatively, simply leaving them on the streets to fend for themselves.

Are some of these adopted children really orphans? The offer of a foreign education for her beloved youngest son seemed like a dream come true for Elizabeth Rioba. But the Kenyan mother says a family member tricked her into signing adoption papers, and now it's been five years since she's seen her boy.

The Polish couple who adopted 4-year-old Abednego and renamed him Mikolaj say the procedure was fully legal, took six months and involved Polish diplomats who spoke with the birth parents. The child’s mother acknowledges that she signed papers but says she did not understand them.

Child protection experts say such tragic misunderstandings are common in a part of the world where adoption is a foreign concept. Criminals can exploit the gap between wealthy Westerners who genuinely want to help and poor Africans who want to do the best they can for their children.

Speaking in her Kenyan coastal village of mud huts, baby chickens scuttling between her feet, Rioba said she thought the couple was taking her son to Poland for schooling and would bring him to her on holidays.

She said, "Instead of bringing him back, they said the child was theirs." She said that lawyer after lawyer declined to take her case, and that the one who did, wanted $1,600. She started paying money but ran out of money so she had to give up.

In an e-mail to the Associated Press, the Polish adoptive father said he was in e-mail contact with Rioba and her husband and had sometimes assisted them financially. But Rioba, who speaks poor English and has no phone or electricity, said that she and her husband quarreled over giving up the child and separated, and that she had not been told of any contact with her son. Repeated efforts to reach her husband by phone for comment were unsuccessful.

The Polish father, who declined further interview requests, requested anonymity to protect the boy's privacy. He said he took e-mails bearing Rioba's name at face value, without checking to see whether they were written by her. Rioba said she bore no ill will toward the Polish couple, instead she blamed the relative who misled her about the process and who she suspects made money from it.

There's no word for adoption in Rioba's Swahili language. It is common for Africans to send orphaned or impoverished children to live with richer relatives, said Nairobi-based UNICEF expert Margie de Monchy, who has spent decades working on child protection issues. Unlike in adoptions, the child remains in regular contact with the parents.

Americans adopted 1,725 Ethiopian children in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2008, about 70 per cent of all U.S. adoptions from Africa, according to the U.S. State Department. The year before, 1,255 Ethiopian children were adopted by Americans.

Thomas DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, does not attribute the increase to a celebrity factor, but he says some high-profile adoptions by celebrities have raised awareness of the availability of orphans in Africa.

He said, "One of the good things about the Madonna adoption or Angelina Jolie, those adoptions brought the need to the attention of Europeans or Americans. And it brought the possibility to people's attention."

Rich foreigners have been adopting children from poorer nations for decades. Mia Farrow, now the mother of 14, adopted an orphan from the Vietnam War in 1973. Jolie adopted her sons Maddox and Pax from Cambodia and Vietnam, and her daughter Zahara from Ethiopia.

But critics have slammed Madonna's efforts to adopt a second child from Malawi this week, accusing her of acting like a rich bully by using her money and status to fast-track the adoption process. On Tuesday, Madonna insisted she was following standard procedures. I find that hard to believe.

The country's child welfare minister had come out on April 2nd 2009 in support of the pop superstar's application to adopt 3-year-old Chifundo ‘Mercy’ James. The government of Malawi had previously come under fire after Madonna adopted David Banda, a 13-month-old Malawain child. That country’s information minister countered with; “Madonna has been good to us. She is supporting over 25,000 orphans in this country and she has proved that she can take care of David.”

I don’t take issue with the fact that she can take care of the boy. What I do take issue with is the claim that she supports 25,000 orphans in that country. If it costs on the average of $100 a month to support one child in that country, then multiply that by 12 and then multiply that figure by 25,000 and you get an annual figure that will surely boggle the mind. Does anyone actually believe that she is spending $30 million dollars a year supporting that many children?

Because of her donations to Malawi, officials there overlooked Malawian regulations which stipulates that prospective parents be resident in the country for 18 to 24 months, during which time welfare officials assess their suitability – a rule that was bent when Madonna was allowed to take her adopted son, David, to London in 2006 before his adoption was finalized.

Unfortunately for Madonna, in a surprise move, a judge on April 3, 2009, rejected Madonna's request to adopt a second child from Malawi and said it would set a dangerous precedent to bend rules requiring that prospective In a lengthy ruling, Judge Esme Chombo sided with critics who have said exceptions should not be made for the star who has set up a major development project for this impoverished, AIDS-stricken southern African country. He said that other foreigners have adopted children from Malawi, but the only case in which the residency requirement was waived was to allow Madonna to take David Banda out of the country in 2006, before that adoption was finalized in 2008. Chombo indicated concern that doing so again could set a precedent that might eventually jeopardize children. In his ruling, he said, "It is necessary that we look beyond the petitioner ... and consider the consequences of opening the doors too wide. By removing the very safeguard that is supposed to protect our children, the courts could actually facilitate trafficking of children by some unscrupulous individuals."

Madonna's lawyer, Alan Chinula, said later that he has "filed notice for appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal."

It reflects badly on Madonna that she has chosen to fight the decision of the Malawian judge who said that she and anyone else that wants to adopt a Malawian child cannot bend the rules in doing so. She thinks that because she is a world renowned entertainer and has money that she can flout the laws of Malawi to serve her own purpose. If the Supreme Court of that nation were to side with her,(and that is unlikely) then anyone can go into Malawi and adopt a child within a week, depending on how much money they can throw at the government officials as a bribe. She is going to come out of this fray as a thug. She should accept the decision of the judge, apologize to the people of Malawi and slither back to the United States post haste. But because she is Madonna, she will remain like an unlanced boil that festers on one's backside and bring undeserved shame on the people of the United States.

Simon Chisale, the Malawian welfare official who has been handling Madonna's adoption cases, said outsiders are being considered as adoptive parents because traditional family structures have broken down.

I understand fully what he is saying. Turning the orphans over to extended families used to be simpler, but now it is more difficult. Extended families have the heart to look after the orphans but the means to do so are not there.

Malawi, with a population of 12 million, is among the poorest countries in the world; with rampant disease and hunger, aggravated by periodic droughts and crop failure. The UN says one million Malawian children have lost one or both parents and estimates about half of those were because of AIDS.

Adopting a hundred or two hundred Malawian orphans when there are 800 thousand of them left behind, is not fair to those left behind, especially when the money could be better spent contributing towards the support of all of the Malawian orphans and other orphans in Africa.

One way to help them is to financially assist the unmarried women in Ethiopia, who are permitted to adopt an orphan in that country. But even that won’t help because not all unmarried women want the extra burden that may have an effect on their prospects for marriage.

Because of AIDS and catastrophic drought, there may be 5 million Ethiopian orphans by 2010. Because of this, Ethiopian adoption is a growing Africa adoption opportunity. The number of adoptions in 2006 grew to 732 children. This was a large increase over the 441 Ethiopian adoptions in 2005. The number of adoptions has grown 6 fold since 2002. Adoptions to both the U.S. and Canada have increased notably. In the U.S. the numbers were 1,725 in 2008, vs. 1,255 in 2007. In Canada the 135 Ethiopian children adopted into Canada in 2007 (latest year available) represented 74 more than the year before, an increase of 121%.

With AIDS ravaging large areas of Africa the traditional cultural ‘safety net’ for orphans, their extended families, has been severely limited. The deaths due to the AIDS epidemic have ravaged families across the continent.

In the West, adoption from Africa is far less prevalent than countries such as Russia, China and Guatemala. Africa adoption is developed when compared to some other countries, but it is still an option with the right amount of research and the willingness to dedicate to adopting.

Africa adoption is often in the news as a growing option for prospective parents. There are many programs for African adoption. The rising number of orphans in Ethiopia resulting from HIV/AIDS and poverty has led to an increase in the number of children placed abroad. The number of Ethiopian children adopted internationally doubled from the previous year, to 1,400, with most children going to France, Australia, the United States and Ireland. In addition, the number of adoption agencies in the capital of Addis Ababa has doubled, to 30.

A May 24, 2006 article in The Globe and Mail "Out of Africa: A Trickle of Orphans," stated that of the 53 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, international adoptions routinely take place only from Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Liberia, despite the millions of orphans across the continent. Some countries such as Nigeria and Sudan forbid adoption, while others, including Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, permit it but make the process so hard, for instance, by requiring adoptive parents to live in the country for several years, that international adoptions effectively do not occur.

Most African cultures have traditionally relied on extended family and the community to care for children. Interest in Ethiopia has grown since actor Angelina Jolie adopted an Ethiopian baby girl in 2005. Roberta Galbraith, director of Manitoba-based ‘CAFAC Intercountry Adoptions’, said that as awareness of the relative ease of adopting from Ethiopia has grown, there has been a surge in interest. CAFAC now has 90 families in the process. An Ethiopian child can be adopted in about 18 months, at a cost of $15,000 to $20,000, including the legal process in Ethiopia and fostering for the child while that is under way.

In the Nov. 2, 2006 article "Madonna's Adoption in Malawi May Lead Others To Africa" the New York Sun reported that Americans are increasingly interested in adopting from Ethiopia and Liberia. Agency director Cheryl Carter-Shotts said that stars like Angelina Jolie, who took home an Ethiopian daughter last year, are spurring the rise in African adoption. Her agency, ‘Americans for African Adoption’ charges adoption fees of $4,500 for Liberia and $7,500 for Ethiopia, not including travel, significantly less than other countries.

Statistics on international adoptions to the U.S. from the U.S. State Department showed that Ethiopia made the top five for the first time, after China, Guatemala, Russia and Korea. Adoptions from Ethiopia rose 66% for fiscal 2006. It was the only country in the top eight to show an increase over one year, also outpacing Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Liberia.

Ben Mulroney, Canada's UNICEF ambassador, said in 2006 that he hoped celebrities have their hearts in the right place when it comes to adopting African orphans, but fears that jetting off to Africa and bringing home a baby is becoming just another Tinseltown trend.

I agree with his sentiments. If a Caucasian Hollywood star adopted an eighteen-month orphan who is also Caucasian and who had lived in an American orphanage; that movie star would get some publicity and then the news media would lose interest in the story. However, when a Caucasian movie star or for that matter even a Caucasian entertainer flies to Africa and adopts a black homeless child, the news media will attach itself to that star and the child forever. The publicity will become a gift that keeps on giving.

Consider pop stars Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson; in which both are not known for their expertise in either raising children or the dire situation in the Third World. They too expressed a desire to adopt internationally. It's a bandwagon thing.

From the public point of view, there's almost a perversion of the family when people reading this in a magazine and seeing it on TV equate adopting a baby in Africa with owning a 15-carat diamond or a Lamborghini. It's unfortunate that these good deeds and this altruism and this willingness to raise a child from a third world country is coming off as a trend.

All I have to say is; how lucky it is for those kids to be adopted by movie stars and entertainers and placed into a life of splendor. But should we really care that celebrities adopt these children? There are many other people in this world who adopt third world kids. Where are their stories?

Madonna's attempt to adopt one-year-old David Banda had sparked an international debate about how best to care for the millions of orphans in places such as Malawi, a desperately poor country plagued by debt and AIDS. Italy's foreign minister has even accused her of ‘kidnapping’ the baby when she took custody of him in 2006 and flew to London with the baby in her arms.

Some advocates say children are best raised close to home, but The Human Rights Consultative Committee, a Malawian coalition of 67 organizations, launched a legal challenge to Madonna's adoption of David in 2006 on noting that the country's regulations require prospective parents to stay with a child in Malawi for 18 to 24 months for assessment before the adoption is formalized. Despite those regulations, Madonna was permitted to take the baby to her home in England, and Malawian officials said the family would be monitored there.

Ben Mulroney said that Madonna had been running around Malawi doling out money for orphanages. This explains why it was so easy for Madonna to get the child out of Malawi by side-stepping the law in that country.

I don’t want to belittle the efforts of ordinary people who want to adopt a child from a third world country. I am convinced that their hearts are in the right places. It is easy to understand their feelings. They realize that they can adopt Canadian or American orphans but they also know that if those orphans aren’t adopted, the children still have a very good chance of succeeding in life since both nations have so much to offer all of its children.

In third world countries, the children there aren’t so lucky. A homeless orphan who grows up as a street kid is doomed from the very start. When someone adopts an orphan from a third world country, that person is giving that adopted child a special break. That child is pulled out of an orphanage that is struggling to care for its charges and given a decent home to live in. Doing this will certainly make an adopting couple feel good about what they have done. They know that thousands of orphans will be left behind but at least one will be saved.

Canadian adoptions from Africa are on the rise: Most are from Ethiopia - now the second most popular country for Canadian international adoptions - rising from 13 adoptions in 2002 to 96 in the first nine months of 2007. South Africa, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo have begun sending children to Canada in the past five years.

The trend is in large part due to supply and demand: China's adoption program is slowing down drastically - there are now five-year waiting lists for Chinese infants - so Canadian adoption agencies are spanning out across the globe looking for new programs. Many are turning to Africa, where conflict, poverty and disease have orphaned millions of children - 12 million from HIV-AIDS alone.

Despite the need, and celebrity endorsements from Madonna and Angelina Jolie, Africa's future as an adoption hub troubles some experts because of the potential for abuses.

Earlier this year, Ottawa alerted provincial adoption regulators about serious child-trafficking problems in Liberia where Canadians have adopted 26 children since 2005. Three jurisdictions; Alberta, Newfoundland and Nunavut responded by halting all adoptions from Liberia. Canada-wide moratoriums also apply to Cambodia and Guatemala.

Some experienced adoption agents say there is potential for more problems as agencies scramble for licences in countries where international adoption is new, and proper checks and balances are not yet streamlined.

I have some concerns that some people who desire to adopt babies will even fly to third world countries and solicit pregnant girls for their babies.

There are millions of African children in need of loving families but most are not the coveted baby or toddler. They are older, not in perfect health, or they are attached to siblings. Girls are most often requested in some cases because American couples believe it's more difficult for African boys to adjust in the United States. They want child just like Angelina Jolie’s adopted child.

I believe that there are couples who want to go child shopping for an ideal child. However, the real sacrifice any adopting couple can make is to adopt a child from a third world who is disabled. Unfortunately, we rarely hear of such adoptions. They exist but on very rare occasions. These children are the ones in real need. But be sure of one thing. You won’t be reading about those children being adopted by movie stars and entertainers. Such a sacrifice on their part is simply not in their hearts.