 | | | | | |  | | | Poverty often divides families | |
| | | |  | | | | | | | | The Hague Convention on Adoption
The Convention states:
• Adoptions cannot be permitted without the agreement of the legal adoption authorities in the country of origin as well as the country of the adopted parents.
• Adoptions are not permitted without discussions with surviving relatives. | |
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| | |  | | | Intercountry adoption:
Trafficking children
Poverty and war are amongst the biggest reasons for children being put up for adoption.
But times of war and social upheaval are the very moment when children should not be adopted says Nigel Cantwell, who works on adoption issues for UNICEF.
"In natural emergencies or even armed conflicts there is a very clear guideline that no intercountry adoptions must be allowed for at least two years if a child's family, its wider family, has not been traced."
In the early 1990s Nigel Cantwell helped negotiate the Hague Convention on Adoption. This was intended to promote local adoption first and then regulate intercountry adoptions.
But the Convention was still in its infancy when the overwhelming political events of the early '90s shook Eastern Europe. Since then it has been open season on adoptions from those countries.
"There was absolutely no experience of dealing with intercountry adoptions. It should not have been an immediate option at that time," Mr Cantwell explained.
"Time is needed for the authorities to consult, to understand the issues and set up a system that's going to protect the rights and the best interests of their children."
Romania was one of those East European countries. In 1991, after the fall of the Ceausescu regime, television screens around the world were flooded with pictures of scrawny children abandoned in squalor in the orphanages. There were 100,000 of them.
European and American families rushed to adopt and with them came the brokers and facilitators, the people prepared to make money out of any tragic situation.
Romanians like "Dan", who went into business selling the children he found as he scoured the countryside. "They can obtain a small fortune of money selling their kid," he told the BBC.
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