International Adoption: Thoughts on the Human Rights Issues

Abstract

the rights of children to the kind of family love and care that will enable them to grow up with a decent chance of living a healthy and fulfilling life.Many who oppose international adoption, however, argue that it violates the human rights of the children placed and of any birth parents that may exist, and serves only the interests of those who should be seen as having no rightsthe adults who want to become parents.Human rights activists in the international adoption arena have spoken with a relatively singular voice -a voice that is generally critical of international adoption, calling either for its abolition, or for restrictions that curtail its incidence in ways that I see as harmful to children, limiting their chances of being placed in nurturing homes with true families, and condemning even those who are placed eventually to unnecessary months and years in damaging institutions.This voice has had a powerful impact, in part because the international children's rights organizations taking the negative view include such powerful ones as UNICEF and the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.Also, opposition to international adoption that purports to be grounded in children's human rights tends to be more politically palatable and thus persuasive, than arguments grounded in a country's nationalist claims of ownership rights over its children, or nationalist pride in not appearing unable to care for its children.It is important for those who care about human rights and about children to think through their position on these issues, rather than simply accepting without question the notion that the children's human rights establishment has a fix on the truth in this area.2 The future of international adoption, and of many children, is at stake.International adoption, involving the transfer of children for parenting purposes from one nation to another, presents an extreme form of what is often known as "stranger" adoption, by contrast to relative adoption.Relative adoption refers to situations in which a step parent adopts the child of his or her spouse, or a member of a child's extended biological family adopts the child whose parents have died or become unable or unwilling to parent.Such adoptions are largely uncontroversial: children stay within the traditional biological family network, and the adoptive parents are generally thought of as acting in a generous, caring manner by taking on the responsibility for these children in need.By contrast, in international adoption adoptive parents and children meet across lines of difference involving not just biology, but also socioeconomic class, race, ethnic and cultural heritage, and nationality.Typically

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