Adoption or abduction?

01/03/2013

I have been prompted by the life story of Billy* to write about this subject, I stress that this topic is only touched on briefly here; it opens a world of opinion and discussion.

Billy’s daughter was adopted aged 4 by Americans who were in Ethiopia working with NGOs. This was 12 years ago, they have not seen or heard from here since, they do not know why. They have tried to find information on her, with little result other than a single photograph of her which appears to be recent. Could it be that her adoptive family do not want her to keep her family connection? Or maybe the Ethiopian and American Governments have something to hide with regards to this type of adoption.

Adopting children from Ethiopia has been something of a scandal for several years; papers for children were being incorrectly or fraudulently completed – if completed at all. Rumour of false promises that the children will return in the future or that the family left behind will be financially supported indefinitely. Alongside this, agencies were acting for their own benefit, defrauding families of their children to provide a child which meets the criteria of the adopters rather than encouraging adopters to readdress their standards. Many children who were adopted and taken out of the country were not orphans, and in fact had all their family intact. This became such a huge issue that Ethiopia closed its doors to foreign adoption for quite some time whilst they tried to remedy the various flaws that had been found out. I believe that it is now an option again, and hopefully it comes with all the red tape that it requires to be a fair and functional department.

It seems that foreigners adopting Ethiopian (and more widely African) children are keen to have children under the age of 3, you know when they are cute, easy to deal with and can learn the relevant language. The older children, or those that required special assistance were not so desirable, they are the ones that were left behind. This lead to a boom of toddlers being taken out the country, in fact some details I found online stated that there was a year when children was the largest export for Ethiopia that year – does this not border on human trafficking?

What can we expect of a developing country if all the youths are being removed before they can make their footprint on their own nation’s future?

This is not to say that many of the children were fairly adopted, and were genuine orphans who now have a very different life to what they faced before. I come to wonder how many children are in a faraway place, wondering why their mother or father gave them away and whether they will ever see them again.

One of the main issues for keeping the connection between Ethiopia and it’s natives who have immigrated is record keeping and access to this information. People move around a lot within the country, meaning for someone to return looking for their family could be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then there is the official route, embassies, charities, government offices, all of which have a façade of wanting to help but never actually provide the fruit for your labour.

This then leads to bigger questions, like why do the children need to be taken out the country to receive the support they so desperately need? Surely, the countries people are adopting from also have plenty of children in despair who would be equally viable for adoption. And why is it that people who adopt are often only really looking for a baby or toddler, no child is ever too old for the love of parenthood.

On the contrary to the above, my host family have four adult children of their own, and two orphans (age 7 and 17 who are not related) living with them, an example that people within Ethiopia can help their own.  

There is no conclusion here; I am merely raising a taboo which I have come across, which also happens to open a can of worms.

Kx