The Guatemalan government, under heavy pressure from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), is trying to halt international adoptions by putting into place the “Protocol of Good Practices.” The claim is that Guatemala’s partially privatized system creates incentives to steal babies, pay birth mothers to give up their children, or to induce them to have children that they would otherwise not have.
Other countries that have halted international adoptions because of UNICEF’s pressure, such as Romania and Honduras, have seen orphanages swell with large numbers of abandoned children. These institutionalized children have little hope for a better life, or even of developing basic social and cognitive skills. No one is expecting it to be any different for Guatemala, which is why UNICEF is promising to provide millions of dollars to build new orphanages for abandoned children.
There are legitimate concerns about having private attorneys play a large role in the adoption process, but this system was put into place because when the Guatemalan system became overwhelmed with too many cases of abandoned children. Furthermore, the international adoption is overseen by two branches of the Guatemalan government (The Family Courts and the Attorney General) and two branches of the US government (the US Embassy and the Department of Immigration).
This results in a highly transparent system. For example, the US Embassy hand picks the doctors that do the DNA testing to confirm that the child really does belong to the birth mother, and is not stolen. and interviews a random sample of birth mothers to make sure that there has been no coercion. The birth mother is given multiple opportunities to change her mind about her decision over a period that lasts at least four months.
UNICEF itself funded a study of adoptions in Guatemala (the ILPEC study) which analyzed 90 randomly chosen cases and found no wrongdoing, payouts, or coercion of birth mothers. A more detailed analysis is available here The ILPEC study also found that the quality of care for children in foster care was vastly superior to the care of children in orphanages.
Finally, even supposing that abuses do occur (as they do even in the United States), it is simply wrong to assume that the system would be improved by involving the government more. UNICEF gave Romania millions of dollars to build orphanages after international adoptions from Romania were ended, and that money disappeared.
Our concern should be for the best interests of the children. No one, including UNICEF, anticipates a significant downturn in the number of abandoned children if international adoptions are ended. Given that, the best place for the children is with loving families rather than in orphanages.
The Problems With UNICEF
Most of these criticisms are taken from the Families Without Borders report on UNICEF, but not all.
- Freedom from coercion of birth mothers should be the goal of adoption oversight, not favoring a nationality for the child.
- The birth mother should decide the terms of her child’s adoption, not the government or UNICEF.
- The adoption process is highly transparent. It is overseen by two bodies of the Guatemalan government, which are the Family Court and the Attorney General. It is also overseen by two bodies of the US government, which as the US Embassy, and the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration services.
- Many children are informally adopted by relatives in the extended family in Guatemala. This is a fairly routine practice in poor countries when the mother is not able to provide for her child. Thus, official adoptions have already exhausted this possibility.
- The US Embassy picks the doctors that perform the DNA test, and supervises the process of DNA testing. Less than 0.6% of babies fail DNA tests. This means that the incidence of stolen babies is extremely low.
- The US Embassy interviews 5% of birth mothers, chosen randomly, to make sure that they are not being coerced.
- UNICEF recognizes that closing international adoption will not have a significant impact on the number of children who are given up by their parents, which is why they are prepared to give millions of dollars to Guatemala to build orphanages. Other countries that have closed international adoptions, such as Romania and Honduras, have seen the ranks of children in orphanages swell.
- The presumption that the government adoption process would be less corrupt than the attorney based adoption process is not warranted. In the case of Romania, millions of dollars were given to build orphanages, but the money disappeared, and was therefore not spent on the children.
- The birth mother has four different opportunities to change her mind about the adoption, over a minimum of several months. One of these opportunities is without the adoption attorney present.
- UNICEF’s requirement that the birth mother’s family be notified is a breach of her right to privacy. Informal adoptions in which a child is raised by a relative from the extended family is already a common arrangement. If the birth mother is choosing to give up her child for adoption, then that means she could be facing a situation that is potentially abusive.[UNICEF’s position on abortion recognizes this, and thus they oppose family notification laws for abortions). Furthermore, many birth mothers live in rural areas with poor transportation and documentation. It can take the government years to track down the various relatives. Requiring family notification is tantamount to sentencing the child to years in an institution.
- While informal adoptions within the extended family are common, adoptions outside of the extended family are extremely rare in Guatemala. UNICEF recognizes this, which is why they want to spend money on an advertising campaign popularizing adoption in Guatemala. This is money that could be better spent on poverty relief, particularly since it is unlikely that the campaign could succeed - 56% of Guatemala lives under the poverty line as of the late 1990’s.
- Furthermore Guatemala society has pervasive racism against indigenous Mayan ethnicities (much like the United States in the 1950s against African Americans), and most of the babies given up for adoption are of indigenous ethnicity. It is unlikely that adoptive parents could even be located.
- If the birth mother has no plans, or cannot be located, then Families Without Borders agrees with UNICEF that preference should be given to Guatemalan families, but with the following caveats:
- Family members meet fitness requirements, such as freedom from domestic violence.
- Parents are put on the waiting list, not the children. Families Without Borders supports allowing Guatemalans to go straight to the top of the adoption waiting lists. But UNICEF has a different proposal: they want to put the children on the waiting lists, not the parents. Babies would be kept in orphanages until a year (or more) has passed. Only then would parents from other countries be considered. Keeping children in orphanages for extra time is not in their best interests.
