Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Vietnam renews adoptions with US but Russia still bans US adoptions

The United States and Vietnam will resume adoptions, ending a six-year ban. The ban was imposed after reports of babies being sold and some children offered without parental consent.



The new system will allow Americans to adopt children who have special needs or are over five years old. The adoptions will begin again after the Vietnam decides which US adoption service groups will be authorized to represent parents in the US. Nguyen Van Binh, director of the adoption agency at the Vietnamese Justice Ministry said that two agencies would be issued licenses next week.
 The US government also announced the renewal of adoptions: Beginning September 16, 2014, USCIS will accept and adjudicate Form I-800 petitions filed on behalf of children from Vietnam who meet the specific criteria of a Special Adoption Program under the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention or Convention). The announcement said that Vietnam has taken a number of steps since 2012 to improve its implementation of the Hague Convention, particularly with respect to adoption of children with special needs and older children. The US government statement went on to say that the US Department of State could now issue Hague Adoption Certificates on a case-by-case basis.
 Before the ban in 2008, Vietnam was popular as a source of children for adoption. The allegations that led to the ban on adoptions from Vietnam were confirmed by a UN report in 2009. It found that cash payments were made by adoption agencies to orphanages. This led to orphanages seeking out children to be adopted without proper checks on family circumstances or their background. The resumption of these limited types of adoptions may be a prelude to allowing all adoptions according to a delegation of US senators who visited Vietnam last year.
 Russia has banned adoptions by Americans since January 1, 2013. The most popular country for US adoptions were China, Ethiopia, and then Russia at the time of the ban. Supporters of the Russian bill claimed that some US adoptive parents had been abusive, and that there had been 19 deaths of adopted Russian children since the 1990's. The Russian law might have been partly in retaliation for the US passage of the Magnitsky Act.
 However, there was also a very negative reaction in Russia to a case where a seven-year-old adopted by an American nurse was sent back to Russia with a note saying that she no longer wanted him: Little Artem Saveliev was last year taken from a grim orphanage and given a new life in Tennessee last year. But his adoptive mother Torry-Ann Hansen, a 34-year-old nurse, yesterday put him on a ten-hour flight as an unaccompanied minor with a note 'to whom it may concern' saying: 'I no longer wish to parent this child'. Given the present tense relations between Russia and the US, adoptions from Russia may not resume soon.
The ban halted pending adoption of 259 Russian children to about 230 US families. A year after the ban many of the families were looking to adopt elsewhere but some were still hoping the ban would be lifted. Many of the families had already traveled to Russia and bonded with the children they were to adopt.

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