Austria Adoption Stopped

January 1, 2005

Comment: TT.com reported that after two cases of international adoptions from Ethiopia, in which children were offered for adoption pretending to be orphans using forged documents, adoptions from that country were stopped in Austria, pending further investigation. The new Minister of Justice has just proposed a new law that would only allow international adoptions from countries that have signed the Hague Convention, similarly to a bill in Ireland.

Unfortunately, there are some information missing in this article. International adoptions in Ethiopia have expanded rapidly over the past years. F*rom 262 children in 2002, the number climbed to 2520 in 2007. Actually, over 70 adoption agencies are working in the country and* the “demand” is increasing because the possibilities to adopt in other states have diminished (Vietnam, China, Eastern Europe). All the ingredients are there for a country’s adoption system to shift from “white” to “grey” – that is, from a well-regulated effort to authorize international adoptions in the best interest of the child, to a business that is taking children from living families in order to gain profits from Western adoption fees. The decision of the Austrian authorities to stop adoptions with Ethiopia is most welcome and could be understood by other receiving countries for them to assess the situation with Ethiopia and examine the activities of their agencies working in the country.