Romania 5 300 British Pounds for a Romanian child

September 5, 2006

Comment: Context: The Romanian daily newspaper is basing its information on the news released by British medias, both TV and press. The Romanian journalist then relays the reaction of the national authorities in charge of child protection. And the conclusions are extracted from the recent international report, co-published by Unicef and Terre des hommes on the prevention of child trafficking in South Eastern Europe. The context of this article is obviously influenced by the coming adhesion of Romania to EU in January 2007, evoking at its very beginning the negative reaction in UK regarding the influx of Romanian (and Bulgarian) emigrants in the UK labor market.

A “denigration campaign”? In Romania, for 14 years, thousands of children have been given away for international adoption and almost everybody in the country knew that big money was involved. Not necessarily aware of the change of law, the intermediary and the mothers of Tiqeet tried to get a “deal”, pushed by the journalists or not is a question that the Romanian article cannot answer. However, the proposal of a child in these circumstances is just the first step, the mothers having nothing to “loose”. The Romanian legislation actually forbids adoptions by foreigners living abroad, but the journalists don’t tackle the question of the procedure. Impossible to know if illegal schemes would have been used to get the children out of the country.

The investigation is therefore succinct and does not give prove of a real traffic. However, false paternity recognitions for babies born in Romania and other Eastern European countries are frequent. It is actually the easiest way to go around severe legislations, but since such dealings are very private matter, it is difficult to uncover them.

The UNICEF and Tdh joint report launched on the 30th of august 2006, points out that “child traffickers find easy prey in South Eastern Europe” because of poverty, exclusion, marginalization… “Prevention efforts must now focus on preventing trafficking from happening in the first place”.