Thoughts on Recent Readings

I know... it has been TOO long since my last update.   But I promise to share more when we actually get confirmation of our upcoming homecoming date!  For now I will share "my" response to recent postings I have read on the ethics of international adoption.  It is a hard subject... but I very much believe in the perspective that Elizabeth Barholet writes from in the following article:
Focus on the Child’s Human Rights

Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor of law and the faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School, is the author of “Family Bonds” and “Nobody’s Children.”

The news media often distorts some aspects of international adoption, but can at the same time bring needed attention to important realities.

International Adoption: Thoughts on the Human Rights Issues

"The biggest problem in international adoption is that many who call themselves advocates for children’s human rights press for legal restrictions that limit the ability to provide homes to children in need. Thus Save the Children calls for denying Madonna’s second adoption based on interpreting a residence requirement so as to prevent virtually all international adoption. Some 67 children’s rights organizations went into court to oppose her first adoption. Unicef calls regularly for restrictions limiting international adoption to at best last-resort status. Romania was forced by similar pressures to outlaw such adoption as a condition of joining the European Union.

To fix this problem we need to focus policymakers on the real human rights issues for children. The judge who granted Madonna’s first adoption got it right in ruling that Malawi’s residence requirement must be read in light of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that required allowing the child David to grow up in the nurturing home that only international adoption would provide.

Angelina Jolie and her adopted son Maddox.Many millions of children worldwide are living and dying in orphanages or on the streets, with no possibility of finding homes in their own country. Unicef argues for the creation of foster care and social welfare programs, but these things will not happen overnight, and foster care generally doesn’t work nearly as well for children as adoption.

International adoption provides good homes for the children lucky enough to be placed, and brings significant new resources into countries to improve orphanage conditions and help build welfare programs for the future. Celebrities like Madonna and Angelina Jolie have provided many millions of dollars for such efforts. While few individual adopters have their resources, many develop comparable interest as a result of their own adoptions in contributing what they can to help those children left behind.