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RIGHTS: Lucrative Market for Illegal Adoptions Fuels Abuse

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 11 2003 (IPS) - A growing industry dedicated to finding infant children to fill the demand for adoptions within a country or abroad generates millions of dollars of profits each year, representing the accumulation of the exorbitant sums paid by adoptive parents.

Fraudulent adoptions stood out among the rights violations reports received over the past year by Juan Miguel Petit, United Nations Commission on Human Rights special rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

Although the rapporteur’s mandate does not encompass adoption, Petit said that it does come under his authority when it involves a child treated as the object of a commercial transaction, in other words, the sales of girls and boys.

In presenting his report to the Commission on Human Rights, whose annual sessions wrap up here Apr 24, Petit chose not to name the countries involved in irregular international adoptions, which with the excuse of giving a home to abandoned and vulnerable children open the doors to traffickers, he said.

This sort of abuse could be prevented through legally defined national adoption systems that are more efficient and accessible, and include appropriate regulatory mechanisms, said the rapporteur.

In many international adoptions, children are taken from poor families in developing countries and adopted by families in industrialised nations.

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 1,000 to 1,500 children are trafficked each year in Guatemala alone. Weak laws in the Central American country and the great demand created by potential adoptive parents abroad have created a market in which babies are treated as merchandise.

Petit said he is alarmed by reports of practices in industrialised countries that consist of using fraud and coercion to convince single mothers to give up their children for adoption.

Petit also told the Commission on Human Rights that there is a serious problem in criminalizing and stigmatising child victims of sexual violence. In addition to the harm inflicted by the aggressor, the minors then also suffer marginalization from society, he said.

Such is the case of seven children taken by traffickers from El Salvador to a brothel in Guatemala, ultimately "rescued" by the Guatemalan police last year. The UN rapporteur demanded the release of the seven, who had been imprisoned "for their own protection".

Another example of the "blame the victim" type of injustice took place in Cambodia, where police arrested 14 Vietnamese women and girls. A court sentenced them to two months in prison even though the women had been victims of trafficking and exploitation, said Petit.

Society often denies its most painful problems, which leads the victims to be seen as the cause of the problem, and transforms innocence into a potential threat, and children end up in the hands of institutions or in criminal proceedings that only worsen the situation, the rapporteur said.

Petit presented reports to the UN Commission on Human Rights on the results of the visits he made in 2002 to South Africa and France. This year, he said, similar missions are planned for Bolivia and Paraguay.

In South Africa, Petit saw the efforts and progress made by the government to leave behind decades of oppression, racial segregation and lack of freedom. But he said there is a great deal of work still to be done.

The UN rapporteur said he is particularly concerned about the high levels of social and family violence in South Africa, manifest also in numerous cases of rape and sexual abuse.

The South African government "is perhaps a little conservative in speaking openly" about problems related to sex, even when minors are involved.

Another cause for alarm in that country is the expansion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic due to the fact that free medicines are not distributed to prevent transmission from mother to child, nor are these life-saving drugs provided to people already infected with the virus, he said.

"I would like to see the government of South Africa more active on this issue," stated Petit, an Uruguayan national.

In France, child immigrants enter the country or pass through it to other destinations. These minors are often victims of trafficking and exploitation, but some have left their home country of their own volition, but later fall into the hands of the mafias.

Most of these children come from Eastern European countries, particularly Romania, and from West Africa.

The French government is aware of the rising problem of trafficking and prostitution of children within its borders, says Petit’s report.

The phenomenon is attributed to the flow of populations pushed by poverty and social instability, to the emergence of new criminal organisations that treat people as potential sources of profit, and also to ethnic clashes in the countries of origin.

The rapporteur said the efforts of French institutions to prevent the child victims of these phenomena from being treated as criminals are "remarkable".

Some 3,000 international adoptions are recorded in France each year. The adoption process is very closely monitored and it does not appear that children are "sold" for this purpose there.

Petit said that a central aspect of his visit to France was to deal with the denunciations by relatives of children allegedly sexually abused by their parents.

Some of these parents are thought to be involved with child pornography rings, though maintain influential social and political contacts, impeding a legal solution to the claims presented, he said.

The special rapporteur said he had verified a large number of these cases that have not been satisfactorily handled by the courts, in spite of documented proof of abuse perpetrated by parents, including medical reports, testimonies and photos.