When There’s No Place Like Home

Critics charge that UNICEF's obsession with preventing corruption at all costs often results in countries adopting such restrictive regulations that foreign adoptions are reduced to a trickle. "Forces at the very top are making international adoption more and more difficult," says Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who has written extensively on the subject. "What this means is that fewer kids are getting adopted, more children are required to spend time in orphanages, those who get out are of older ages, and are more likely to have developed serious disabilities that make them hard to parent."

Yuster insists that UNICEF never pressures countries to tighten their adoption regulations, and in fact gets involved only when asked. That was the case in 2006 in Liberia, when the government requested an investigation after intercountry adoptions began to rise. Of the several hundred adoptions done in a year, she says, they identified 50 that qualified as "relinquishments under false pretenses." In some cases, unsophisticated parents were led to believe that they would lose custody only temporarily, or would one day join their child in the West. Without good data, she acknowledges, it's hard to know how common such abuses are globally. But "unfortunately, they are not rare, and there seems to be evidence that they are on the rise," she says. "When the surface is scratched, violations can often be found."

With Washington set to begin implementing the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption this spring, some experts think that such violations will decrease, allowing UNICEF and its critics to find more middle ground and common goals. "All of these groups want more ethical practices in adoption," Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, an independent research and policy organization. "But we all need to keep our eye on the prize: finding homes for children who really need them." Wherever they are.

© 2008