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GUATEMALA: Whitewash for ‘Adoption Paradise’

Inés Benítez

GUATEMALA CITY, Jun 5 2007 (IPS) - Guatemala may begin to shed its reputation as a paradise for international adoption now that its parliament has ratified a global adoption treaty and is preparing to pass a law that would regulate the phenomenon in a country where the trafficking and sale of babies have become widespread.

“This was a necessary step. Now we will give families to children, rather than giving children to families,”Attorney-General Mario Estuardo Gordillo told IPS, referring to parliament’s May 21 ratification of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption

So far, 71 countries, including Guatemala, have acceded to the international treaty, which was approved in 1993 and went into effect in 1995.

Gordillo said that when the Hague Convention enters into force in Guatemala on Dec. 31, it will guarantee “clarity, certainty and transparency in the question of adoptions, and will help ensure that the higher interests of children win out.”

The Hague Convention was created to ensure that international adoptions take place in the best interests of the child, and with respect for their fundamental rights, and to prevent the abduction, sale of, or traffic in children.

Guatemala does not yet apply the Convention, because in August 2003 the Constitutional Court declared this country’s accession to the Convention unconstitutional, a decision that Gordillo said was regrettable.

In addition, five parties to the Convention – Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom – objected to Guatemala’s adhesion, and have suspended adoptions from this country because of procedures that are not in compliance with the treaty, anomalies detected in adoption procedures, and reports of the buying and selling of children and baby theft.

Spain’s consul in Guatemala, Bernabé Aguilar, told IPS that the new ratification of the Hague Convention was “necessary but not sufficient” for his country to lift its objection and begin accepting adoptions of Guatemalan children. “We have to wait for the adoption law to be approved, and for the mechanisms to protect minors to go into effect,” he said.

Activists say Guatemala is a paradise for illegal adoptions. The paperwork is fast, and the entire process takes no longer than a year, because the adoptions are processed under notaries rather than judges. Most of the couples who adopt children from this impoverished Central American country are from the United States. The entire process costs them between 25,000 and 30,000 dollars, which covers travel expenses, the official paperwork and legal costs.

So far this year, 683 Guatemalan children have been placed in adoption, out of a total of 2,389 cases that are currently open, sources with the Attorney-General’s Office, which approves the adoptions, commented to IPS. In 2006, 4,496 children were adopted, 10 percent more than in 2005.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Guatemala is the fourth country in the world in terms of the number of children placed in adoption, after Russia, China and South Korea. But in proportion to the population, it is the leader.

Adoptions “are a business that generates around six million dollars a year, money that ends up in the hands of a small group of notary publics,” said Edgar Aguilar, adviser to the chairman of the legislative Commission on Minors and the Family, Francisco Rolando Morales.

Aguilar told IPS that there are houses where pregnant women stay, dubbed “casas de engorde” or “fattening houses”, where the expenses of the pregnancy and birth are covered. Another aspect of the system are the “jaladoras” or baby brokers – paid intermediaries whose task is to convince women (mainly poor young women) to place their children in adoption.

“There are ‘kangaroo mothers’ who make a living having babies and giving them up for adoption in exchange for what are mere crumbs, compared to what the notary publics make,” said Edgar Aguilar.

Nidia Aguilar del Cid, director of Defence of the Rights of the Child in the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman, told IPS that some women have admitted to receiving between 650 and 1,600 dollars – a relative fortune for poor women in Guatemala – for placing their babies in adoption.

Besides ratifying the Hague Convention, Congress also took a step towards final approval of a new adoption law, which is designed to fill Guatemala’s current vacuum in adoption legislation.

Adoptions are now governed by the Civil Code, the Law on Integral Protection for Children and Adolescents, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and there is no specific law or central regulatory authority for adoptions.

The draft law, introduced in Congress in February 2005, seeks to eliminate economic incentives from the process. Article 10 prohibits the biological parents of the child or adolescent placed in adoption to obtain economic or other benefits from the process.

The new law would also create a Rectoría Nacional de Adopciones, an administrative body under the Attorney-General’s Office that would be made up of representatives of different state agencies and would approve adoptions.

Héctor Augusto Dionisio, coordinator of the legal programme at Casa Alianza, the Latin American branch of the New York-based Covenant House, a child advocacy organisation, said care in the selection of the members of the new adoption authority was essential, to keep it from “becoming a nest of corruption.”

He also told IPS that the new regulatory authority should be open to representatives of civil society.

The draft law would leave the notary publics out of the adoption process “until the very end,” said Edgar Aguilar.

The initiative would give priority to local adoptions, which currently represent less than two percent of the total; would make the process for approving adoptive parents stricter; and would create greater oversight of the entire process.

The countless private foster homes and adoption homes that take care of babies or older children as the paperwork goes through would have 15 days to register with the Social Welfare Secretariat.

For its part, the United States plans to ratify the Hague Convention by the end of the year, sources at the U.S. Embassy informed IPS.

Dozens of foreign couples carrying Guatemalan babies can be seen every day at the posh hotels in downtown Guatemala City. In fact, some hotels even have entire floors of rooms dedicated to adoptive couples, with special facilities for families.

Most of the impoverished women who give up their children either willingly or as a result of pressure, coercion or deceit are indigenous or of mixed-race heritage. Indigenous people, who comprise as much as 65 percent of the population, have historically suffered from discrimination in Guatemala, and most of them live in poverty.

“In Guatemala we are sending children abroad and the only argument is that their families are poor,” said Aguilar del Cid.

According to official statistics, more than 50 percent of Guatemala’s population of 12.7 million lives below the poverty line, although non-governmental organisations put the proportion closer to 80 percent.

In a street market in the capital, there are men who quietly offer pregnant women between 15,000 and 20,000 quetzals (1,900 to 2,600 dollars) for their baby, said Aguilar del Cid.

“The ratification of the Convention basically gives our image a whitewash in the eyes of the countries that want to adopt children here,” but the new local legislation must be approved as soon as possible, she said.