Next to China, Russia has always been a popular choice for foreign adoption. A few years ago, however, things started to go very wrong in the world of Russian adoption.
Under an ever-stronger president Vladimir Putin, Russia has increasingly flexed its muscles on a variety of issues over the last couple of years. Not only its immediate neighbors, but also strong Western countries, especially the UK and US, have been recipients of the message sent by the display of power. And the message has been clear – don’t mess with us and our assets. We are strong again, and we won’t tolerate it.
From one perspective one can understand the grumpiness of the Russians. It was not so long ago that the Soviet Union and the Russian economy collapsed and the country was invaded by Western companies who saw an opportunity to capitalize on the superpower’s sudden weakness. Seen from a different perspective, however, power play at the cost of the basic rights of the weak and innocent becomes more problematic. One instance where this has become the case, is in the area of foreign adoptions.
Hoops and hurdles
Adoption of Russian orphans by foreigners started after Russia opened up in the 1990’s. While sources vary considerably on the exact numbers, an estimated 600,000 - 800,000 orphaned children are in need of new homes. Every year, around 7000 children are adopted by foreigners, and in some years the figure is higher. It is true that it has never been easy to adopt a child from Russia - prospective parents have had to jump through endless hoops, but the process did manage to move forward and there are many stories with happy endings.
Abuse and catastrophic consequences
Somewhere around 2005 things started going wrong, however. A number of shocking cases of abuse by American adoptive parents surfaced and a number of adopted Russian children even died in their new country. The unfortunate events caused much unhappiness and foreigners were accused of buying Russian children. Politicians even threatened to ban adoption by foreigners.
The outcome was not as quite as serious, but no less frustrating.
One of the criteria for adopting a Russian child is that the adoption agency that is used by the prospective parents has to be accredited by the Russian Government. When the abuse scandals surfaced and the outcry escalated, the government refused to renew the accreditations of many adoption agencies. Agencies and Children’s Rights activists were alarmed and warned that thousands of children would be impacted negatively, and that the cases of abuse were the exception rather than the rule. The situation became so bad that by April 2007 no US adoption agencies were legally accredited in Russia.
Is there hope for the children?
Since the US is the country that adopts the most Russian children (around 57%), this was not an ideal situation. To everyone’s relief, however, the worst seems to be over. In the past few weeks accreditations have slowly started to come through again. Checks certainly need to be in place to ensure the safety of the children, but it is difficult not to wonder how many children might have missed out on their chance to be adopted while the bureaucrats were busy with a redesign of the system or, more likely, sending a message to the US.
