The children market

Support ACT:

Welcome to ACT’s new website

Our new logo is a styled image of protection: mother and child. This mother and child symbol is then doubled to signify the protection of family and community.
ACT promotes the full implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that first and foremost gives children the right to be cared for by their parents.  It is the responsibility of the State to support families and communities in the upbringing of their children. Intercountry adoption may only be considered if there is no way at all to bring up a child in-country.
The last fifty years an adoption industry has been developping that serves the growing demand for children in the Western world. An industry in which huge sums of money are involved.
Children are obtained for adoption through coercion, fraud and kidnapping, but also through too permissive laws on child relinquishment and/or too rapid termination of parental rights. In many cases unscrupulous go-betweens have found that large profits can be made by arranging the transfer of children from poverty-stricken homes to people with means.
Many such children are sold for money (disguised as adoption fees) either through independent adoptions or through licensed and accredited adoption agencies and regulated by adoption laws.
ACT considers this a demand-driven market in children, which should be labeled as child trafficking and stopped.
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Article 20
1. A child temporarily or permanently deprived of his or her family environment, or in whose own best interests cannot be allowed to remain in that environment, shall be entitled to special protection and assistance provided by the State.
2. States Parties shall in accordance with their national laws ensure alternative care for such a child.
3. Such care could include, inter alia, foster placement, kafalah of Islamic law, adoption or if necessary placement in suitable institutions for the care of children. When considering solutions, due regard shall be paid to the desirability of continuity in a child’s upbringing and to the child’s ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background.
Article 21
States Parties that recognize and/or permit the system of adoption shall ensure that the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration and they shall:
[...]
(b) Recognize that inter-country adoption may be considered as an alternative means of child’s care, if the child cannot be placed in a foster or an adoptive family or cannot in any suitable manner be cared for in the child’s country of origin;
The below description of child trafficking for adoption dates from 1990, but still fits what’s happening today in trafficking for adoption.
General features of child trafficking
(J.H.A. van Loon, Report on Intercountry Adoption, Preliminary Document No. 1 of April 1990, in Preliminary Work, Proceedings of the Seventh Session 101, May 10–29, 1993)
a) Purpose
It may serve the purpose of adoption abroad, but may also be carried out for purposes of prostitution, pornography, cheap labour and other forms of exploitation abroad. It is not always possible to draw a sharp line between these different practices; for example, the biological parents may be told hat their child will be adopted and cared for abroad, while in reality the child will be forced into prostitution.
b) Children concerned
Child trafficking for the purpose of adoption usually concerns healthy fair children because moist prospective adopters in Western Europe, North America and Australia want their children to be in good health and as fair as possible. [Sic: However, since the last years, due to a lack of Caucasian children available, there is a growing tendency to adopt so-called special needs children (older, bi-racial, repairable handicaps) and black African children].
c)
Methods for obtaining childrenThe three principal methods are the sale of children, consent obtained through fraud or duress and child abduction. Combinations are possible (e.g. selling of a child under pressure) and, in addition, it may be difficult in some cases to say whether the child was abducted or whether the biological parents gave their consent.
a. Sales There are frequent reports of parents giving up their child for adoption in return for a certain, often very small sum of money – for example, out of fear that the child would die of hunger if it remained with them. There are also reports of one parent selling a child without the other parent’s knowledge.
b. Fraud or duress A convincing intermediary (often a female scouting about for children) may persuade a pregnant woman or young mother that a great life awaits her child in a rich country, will reassure the mother and help dispel any feelings of guilt and (combination with (i)) get her to accept money so as to eliminate any suspicion of kidnapping.
c. Abduction There are also many reports of outright abduction of children playing in the yard, returning from school or even being snatched from the arms of their mother.
d. Organisation of the trafficking
Often child traffickers are part of extensive networks. In some countries lawyers and notaries, social workers (even in some cases those appointed by the courts), hospitals, doctors, children’s institutes, sometimes turned into complete “baby farms”, and others work together to obtain children and make profit out of the despair of parents in particular women, in difficult situations, sometimes out of the despair of parents, in particular women. In difficult situations, sometimes by deceiving them. A basic principle of such networks is often that the various intermediaries operate without knowing each other: there are those who contact the pregnant women or young mothers; those who look after the children before they leave for abroad; those who search for clients in the receiving countries and those who bribe the competent authorities and “wash” the “commodity”. Most of this takes place in the developing countries, but the network may also extend to lawyers or other intermediaries in North America or Europe.
e. Leaving the country
In order for the trafficking to be successful it is essential that the child leave the country of origin in a legal or seemingly legal way.