Nowadays, List of international adoption scandals is a topic that arouses the interest of a large number of people. Over the years, it has been the subject of debate, study and research, sparking a variety of opinions and theories. Whether List of international adoption scandals is a person, a topic, a date or any other element, its relevance in today's society is undeniable. Therefore, it is essential to delve into its different aspects to understand its importance and repercussions in various areas. In this article, we will thoroughly explore List of international adoption scandals and analyze its impact on our world today.
This article appears to be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective and add more content related to non-recent events.(December 2023)
Occasionally termed "The Romanian Baby Bazaar", thousands of Romanian babies were sold under questionable circumstances to adoptive parents in western countries, particularly the United States, after the significant increase in the number of orphaned and abandoned children in the country following the policies of Ceaușescu and his subsequent overthrow in 1989.
1990s-2000s
Orphanages in Hunan, China were reported to have bought babies from traffickers with little recorded information of their provenance, before reselling them to other orphanages or families, with many being adopted internationally.
1990s-2000s
Cambodian children were adopted by families in the United States, only to reportedly find years later that the children were disguised as orphans, their birth families instead having been convinced to sell them, and that officials had been paid illegally by unethical facilitators to obfuscate this.
21st Century
2000s
Three Chinese children were removed from families who had violated family-planning regulations, and then sold by officials for international adoption inappropriately.
2000s
Canadian adoptive families raise concerns about the reliability of documentation and their welfare when adopting children from Ethiopian orphanages, following several instances where families of supposed orphans are found alive, or the health and age of the children are not consistent with their documentation.
2004
New Zealand current affairs show 1News investigated cases in Samoa where locals placed their children for adoption to families in the United States without realising or understanding that the process was permanent and not just for their schooling.
2005-2008
16 individuals are charged in Vietnam for allegedly soliciting children from poor families and selling them to foreign adoptive families. A total of 266 babies were reportedly sent for international adoption over the course of 3 years.
2007
Members of the French charity L'Arche de Zoé are charged by the government of Chad after attempting to fly over 100 children out of the country, for adoption by French families. The members claimed the children were orphans from Darfur, Sudan, but it was later revealed that some children were from Chad, with no evidence that they had been orphaned.
2007
Guatemalan officials take custody of dozens of children in a foster home following accusations that they were stolen are obtained through coercion, with many children having already been adopted by families in the United States.
2007
A Haitian centre is forced to return 47 children awaiting international adoption in their care back to their original homes, after misleading families with payment for their children and then keeping them in "inhumane conditions" for months or years.
2010
A US mother attempts to repatriate her adopted 7-year old back to his home country of Russia, by sending him alone on a one-way flight to Moscow with a note claiming she was unable to parent him. This event amongst several others precipitates Russian officials to call for a suspension of US adoptions.
2010
New Life Children's Refuge case: ten Baptist missionaries are arrested and charged with kidnapping 22 children in Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, allegedly attempting to move them to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. It later became clear that at least some of the children were not orphaned at all, and the missionaries did not have authorisation to act as they did.
Ugandan officials are sanctioned and 3 women are charged in the US over their alleged roles in an adoption scheme that defrauded adoptive families and bribed officials in order to procure children for adoption from Uganda and Poland.
^Jorge L. Carro, Regulation of Intercountry Adoption: Can the Abuses Come to an End?, 18 HASTINGS INT’L & COMP. L. REV. 121, 144 (1994) (documenting “baby trafficking” problems in Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, Honduras, Sri Lanka, and Romania).