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Recommendation 1443 (2000)
International adoption: respecting children’s rights
1. The Assembly affirms that all children have
rights, as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,
and, in particular, the right to know and be brought up by their parents in so
far as this is possible. The purpose of international adoption must be to
provide children with a mother and a father in a way that respects their
rights, not to enable foreign parents to satisfy their wish for a child at any
price; there can be no right to a child.
2. The Assembly therefore
fiercely opposes the current transformation of international adoption into
nothing short of a market regulated by the capitalist laws of supply and
demand, and characterised by a one-way flow of children from poor states or
states in transition to developed countries. It roundly condemns all crimes
committed in order to facilitate adoption, as well as the commercial tendencies
and practices that include the use of psychological or financial pressure on
vulnerable families, the arranging of adoptions directly with families, the
conceiving of children for adoption, the falsification of paternity documents
and adoption via the Internet.
3. It wishes to alert European public
opinion to the fact that, sadly, international adoption can lead to the
disregard of children’s rights and that it does not necessarily serve their
best interests. In many cases, receiving countries perpetuate misleading
notions about children’s circumstances in their countries of origin and a
stubbornly prejudiced belief in the advantages for a foreign child of being
adopted and living in a rich country. The present tendencies of international
adoption go against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which
stipulates that if a child is deprived of his or her family the alternative
solutions considered must pay due regard to the desirability of continuity in
the child’s upbringing and to his or her ethnic, religious, cultural and
linguistic background.
4. In 1993, the international community adopted
a set of ethical standards and rules in the form of the Hague Convention on
Adoption, in which the guiding principle is that of subsidiarity, that is to
say international adoption may be considered only if domestic solutions are not
available. The Assembly is forced to recognise that there is insufficient
awareness of the scope of this convention and that few of the member states
have ratified it.
5. The Assembly therefore calls on the Committee of
Ministers of the Council of Europe to give a clear indication of its political
will to ensure that children’s rights are respected, by immediately inviting
the member states to:
5.1. ratify the Hague
Convention on Adoption if they have not already done so, and undertake to
observe its principles and rules even when dealing with countries that have not
themselves ratified it;
5.2. conduct information campaigns to
give professionals and couples contemplating international adoption a full
understanding of the commitments entailed in the Hague Convention and their
implications;
5.3. develop the bilateral and multilateral
co-operation essential for the convention’s effective application;
5.4. help those countries from which foreign children come to develop
their own adoption laws and to train the relevant personnel in public
authorities and properly accredited agencies and all other professionals
involved in adoption;
5.5. ensure that prospective adoptive
parents are eligible and suited to adopt, provide them with compulsory,
in-depth preparation for international adoption and ensure that the situation,
and particularly the psychological well-being, of foreign adopted children is
monitored;
5.6. ensure that in an event such as the divorce of
the adoptive parents, the desertion of the foreign child or the emergence of
difficulties with the adoption procedure, the child’s fundamental rights, such
as the right to a name and to citizenship, will be respected;
5.7. ensure the right of adopted children to learn of their origins at the
latest on their majority and to eliminate from national legislation any clauses
to the contrary.
6. The Assembly also calls on the
Committee of Ministers to invite the member states to co-operate more closely
by every possible means, and notably through Europol, in order to combat
trafficking in children and eliminate mafia-type or other criminal networks,
and to ensure that in the field of international adoption no abuses, however
minor, go unpunished.
7. Moreover, the Assembly asks the Committee of
Ministers to:
7.1. assert more firmly the Council
of Europe’s necessary role, as a guarantor of human rights, in the protection
and promotion of children’s rights;
7.2. pursue that role in the
arena of inter-governmental co-operation - particularly in relation to the new
member states - by developing child-friendly social and family policies
designed to prevent children being abandoned and to keep them in their families
of origin, and, failing that, to develop family-based alternatives and to
promote domestic adoption in preference to placement in
institutions;
7.3. revise the European Convention on Nationality
of 6 November 1997 in order to make it easier for foreign children to acquire
the nationality of the receiving country in the event of the adoption falling
through or the adoption procedure breaking
down.