On 5th September, China announced it is closing the door on international adoption. This announcement comes in the context of the collapse in international adoptions since 2005, whilst for several years western states have become aware of abuses and even scandals in the adoption procedures in the provider states. An interministerial report published in March 2024, reveals the systematic nature of such abuses and provides several recommendations to reinforce controls and to ensure a response to applications for access to the origins of the adopted children. Eventually, the very possibility of adopting foreign children could be jeopardised.
Over the last twenty years, France has witnessed a collapse in the number of adoptions from abroad, reducing from 4,136 in 2005 to a mere 176 in 2023. If international adoption was seen as an altruist gesture back in the 1970s, or even a moral obligation towards children from the Third World under the threat of war, famine or disease, with the possibility of becoming parents for couples “hoping for a child”, it became increasingly suspicious around the turn of the century, when those adopted started to denounce certain practices.
Indeed, the adoptees, when researching their origins, discovered numerous irregularities in the way in which they were adopted: absence of the consent by their parents or forgery of documents for example.
In early 2021, the RAIF association (Network of International adoptees in France) launched a petition calling for the establishment of an inquiry commission on illegal international adoptions since 1970 in France. The petition was signed by some 50,000 people.
On its own initiative, France has for several years reinforced its controls and restrictions for international adoptions, making the procedure ever more complicated. In 1993, the Hague Convention, which was ratified by France in 1998, marked an important stage since it establishes the principle of the greater interest of the child deprived of its family and the principle of subsidiarity. It establishes a legal framework and defines the respective responsibilities of the provider and adopting states.
The convention covers the establishment of central authorities in each state concerned which then accompany the adoption procedures. The provider states must check the free and enlightened consent of the parents or legal representatives.
The law dated 4th July 2005 created the French Adoption Agency (AFA) responsible for facilitating the procedures for parents who wish to adopt from abroad. In February 2022, the so-called “Limon” law, aimed at reforming adoption, prohibited individual procedures and introduced more rigorous controls for the intermediary organisations.
These latter years, in consideration of the greater interest of the child, France decided to suspend international adoptions with Haiti (March 2020), Russia and Ukraine (March 2022), Burkina Faso and Mali (September 2023), and Madagascar (October 2023). The Quai d’Orsay (French foreign office) pointed out the absence of necessary guarantees in terms of “security and ethics of procedures” to justify such suspensions (Response by the Foreign Ministry on 22/02/2024).
In that context, the government established an interministerial mission in 2022 responsible for investigations into illicit practices in international adoptions and for the issue of recommendations. Between December 2022 and June 2023, the mission auditioned a total of 179 managers, professionals and witnesses both in France and abroad. Its conclusions were published in March 2024 in a 118-page report.
On completion of its work, the mission recognised the existence of important abuses in the international adoption system: payment of sums of money, lack of consent, falsification of documents etc. in the most serious cases, the mission reported cases of kidnapping, theft, buying and selling of children. These practices are termed “illicit” since they were not all illegal at the moment when they occurred. The mission described the practices as systemic in view of “the large number of states concerned” and the “time spread of the practices reported”.
It quotes an inquiry conducted with its members in May 2020 by la Voix des adoptés (The voice of adoptees) association on illicit practices. From a sample of 203 respondents, 29 % declared that they possessed evidence of irregularities in the context of their adoption.
The mission also recognises all the work accomplished in France to supervise adoption and to minimise the risks. It considers that “the French provisions for international adoption are now solid and properly conducted“. Nevertheless, it asks France to recognise “the collective shortfalls in the protection of children“. From the 1980s, ambassadors and consuls have warned of certain risks identified and denounced the illicit practices which they witnessed. However, the public authorities delayed in applying the measures required.
The report provides a series of recommendations, in particular the official recognition of the existence of illicit practices which could have affected international adoptions and the failings which allowed them to occur. Several recommendations concern the reinforcement of controls and the coordination between the different players. Finally, the report provides its recommendations for better accompaniment of the adoptees and to facilitate access to their origins. The report also advocates the establishment of an independent commission in order to “consider and listen to those whose adoption abroad has been affected by illicit practices, and to provide them with an appropriate accompaniment”.
At the same time, work has also been conducted in other European states on the abuses in adoption abroad. At the beginning of 2024, a Danish report revealed that adoption agencies operating under the control of the Danish state had been informed of falsified identities for children adopted in South Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. These revelations led Denmark to put a hold on all international adoptions.
In May 2024, the Dutch Government, likewise, putting a final halt on adoptions from other states, due to systemic structural abuses. A report issued in 2021 had shown the existence of numerous illicit practices involving the Dutch Government in the processing of such practices.
Whereas the number of children adopted from abroad dropped below the level of 200 adoptions last year and that the list of prohibited states is ever extending, is France going to continue to authorise international adoption? The question may legitimately be asked. In any case, in the report by the International Adoption Mission (MAI) published in August, its president Etienne Rolland-Piègue does not exclude it. France should, in his view, “take time to review such an option, with as its only guideline, the greater interests of the children”.
On the same subject: The Adoption Law: A reform which fragilises the existing framework.
