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FEATURE: Nepal again tries foreign adoptions

A Nepalese boy plays bat and ball with a flower and a piece of cardboard at an orphanage in Kathmandu on Oct. 28. PHOTO: AFP

These are busy days for Prakash Adhikari as Nepal prepares to resume international adoptions, which were suspended last year following reports that children were being trafficked for sale.

As a legal officer at the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Affairs, Adhikari has been bombarded by queries and requests since the announcement last month that foreign nationals would again be allowed to adopt in Nepal.

The decision was greeted warily by the UN and child rights groups who say that some of the problems that led to abuses of the system had yet to be resolved.

Adhikari, who spends his days fielding queries from foreign adoption agencies seeking clarification of the new rules, insists that Nepal has learned from its mistakes

“The crux of international adoptions is matching children with prospective parents, and in the past there were weaknesses in the matching system,” he said.

Under the new regulations, foreigners will no longer be able to deal directly with children’s centers and the matching of adoptive parents and children will be done by a government body.

“The new rules and processes will make the process better managed and more transparent,” Adhikari said.

In the past, foreign couples paid up to US$20,000 to adopt a child — a huge amount of money in such an impoverished country and one that critics said spawned an illicit adoption market.

Under the new rules, fees are fixed at US$8,000 per adoption, with US$5,000 going to one of 38 approved children’s homes and US$3,000 to the government.

The government has approved 58 foreign adoption agencies, each of which is required to spend US$10,000 a year on “the welfare of children in Nepal.”

But the UN child rights body UNICEF argues that the system remains vulnerable to exploitation.

“The official designation of who is an orphan is still very wide,” said Joanne Doucet, the head of UNICEF’s child protection department in Nepal.

“Not only can it be a child with one or both parents, it can be someone who comes from a poor family, or someone who has been abandoned,” she said.

UNICEF and Swiss child rights group Terre des Hommes completed a study of children’s homes earlier this year and found 60 percent to 80 percent of the 12,000 children being looked after had family they could live with.

“We are not against adoption, but inter-country adoption is not the only option and unfortunately in countries like Nepal it’s the only option that’s promoted and a lot of money is involved,” Doucet said.

Domestic adoption and increased promotion of foster care could reduce the number of children placed in homes, Doucet said.

Madhav Pradhan, the head of a Nepalese child welfare group, Child Workers in Nepal, said the new regulations were an improvement, but argued that the sums involved were still too large in a country where the average annual income was around US$400.

“The amount of money involved has been made more transparent, but the question is, is it appropriate to charge such large amounts,” said Pradhan, whose organization has tried to assist parents whose children were sent abroad without their knowledge or approval.

Pradhan’s main concern is that by creating an adoption system where profits can be made, there is more motivation on the part of the home owners to keep up a steady flow of “paper orphans” who can be processed for adoption.

He believes, like Doucet, that instead of resuming international adoptions, the government should ensure money goes to poor families in their villages, so they do not feel the need to place their children in homes.

Pradhan also worries that the involvement of government officials could increase the risk of malpractice.
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