A new day for intercountry adoptions

By JANICE JACOBS

We are celebrating a new day for intercountry adoptions — the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption is in force for the United States, providing a new system of safeguards to protect children and families.

The convention seeks to guarantee that intercountry adoptions are in the best interests of children. Its principles help member countries prevent the abduction, exploitation, sale or trafficking of children by ensuring that the practices are transparent and appropriately regulated. The convention requires adoption service providers to be accredited by the competent authority in their country in order to perform adoptions between partner countries.

What does convention membership mean for intercountry adoptions to the United States? A new, better system for children, birth parents and adoptive families, with:

UNew rules: The Department of State set rigorous nationwide standards for transparency and ethical practice for adoption service providers when they work with American families, children, and foreign authorities.

UNew procedures: The department designated the Council on Accreditation and the Colorado Department of Human Services to evaluate and accredit adoption services providers. They have accredited more than 160 adoption service providers, ensuring that American families have a broad choice of agencies with a proven ability to provide responsible services.

UNew responsibilities: The department’s Office of Children’s Issues will oversee the new system, track the progress of intercountry adoptions, provide the public with a means to report breaches of the standards, and impose sanctions on those who commit the breaches.

We crafted this new system over years of consultation and collaboration with parents, the adoption community, government agencies and other interested parties. Our goal has been to ensure we meet the best interests of children — meaning that a child is truly in need of an adoptive family, that no birth parent is deceived, that no child becomes a commodity, and that prospective adoptive parents are not exploited.

We are grateful for the commitment of all parties to the success of this system.

We’ve worked hard to get to this day, and we are right to celebrate it.

In 2007, 60 percent of the more than 19,000 intercountry adoptions by American citizens were from countries such as China, India and the Philippines; future adoptions from these and other countries will benefit from the new safeguards. That figure is encouraging, but it also means we have more work to do.

We want to expand this new world of adoptions. Our hope is that U.S. membership in the convention will inspire other countries.

I thank the adoption professionals, our partners in the Hague system, and the thousands of American families who have welcomed international children into their hearts and homes for helping to make this new day possible..

X Janice Jacobs is acting assistant secretary of state for consular affairs. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.