Guatemala's stolen children

This story about Guatemala is sad example of the result of the demand-driven adoption market. Lawyers, doctors, facilitators bend over backwards to get children for adoption.

That's not just the case in Guatemala, read what Yuri Pavlenko, Ukranian Minister for Family, Youth and Sport, has to say about this: Full text HERE:

... But most of the trouble has been caused by middlemen, who allegedly help foreign families to adopt Ukrainian children and charge $30,000-$50,000 for their services. This is precisely what gives rise to talk of public officers’ supposedly corrupt practice. “They come to the Department and make impudent demands. The system that appears to have been formed in the early nineties has penetrated deep into the country and affected boarding schools, orphanages and maternity hospitals”- says Yuri Pavlenko...”

Liudmila Volynets, Head of the Ukrainian State Department for Adoption and Protection of Children’s Rights is of the opinion that the Hague Convention would be a great benefit in the matter of a full-fledged protection for children adopted by foreign families, and counteraction to corrupt middlemen. Unfortunately experience has proven otherwise. Under the Hague Convention these middlemen set up their own adoption agencies, and business continues as usual. Better regulated, but with a devestating effect on local child protection. Romania, the first country to fully implement the Hague Convention, is the proof of that. For more on this read

THE PERVERSE EFFECTS OF THE HAGUE CONVENTION

To get the full picture, read my book Romania, For Export Only