EXCERPT from the BOOK -

8 February 2004

Early evening the Baroness had called from Bucharest. Not long before she had arrived at the TV station for her press conference. She had been surprised by the excited activity there, and quickly learned that the leader of the opposition and the mayor of Bucharest, Trajan Basescu, had organised a press conference just before hers. He had distributed to the press two Government Memoranda for exceptions to the moratorium. The shocking fact was that the memoranda gave, behind each child, whose name was crossed out, the name of a foreign politician who had lobbied for its adoption, described as a personal guarantee for the quality of the adoption. A politically correct description of political pressure?

The Baroness said there were names like John Kerry, Edward Kennedy, several other US congressmen and senators, and MEPs like Jose Marie Gil-Robles, Antonio di Pietro and former EC President Jacques Santer. But she had felt most embarrassed when the press asked her opinion about the most prominently present name: EC President Romano Prodi. So were we.
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Press Release

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While working at the European Commission on the DG Enlargement, Romania Team, Roelie dealt with issues of Children's rights, particularly adoption. This work involved the monitoring of these issues in the framework of Romania's accession to the European Union. Also the programming of pre-accession assistance, the Phare Programme, on these issues was part of her tasks.

In 1999, the adoption policy of the Romanian orphans was connected to a system child trafficking, under cover of corruption. The European Commission asked Romania to reform its policy of children's rights, in order to be accepted into the European Union. Roelie Post was a civil servant who became a whistle blower with the publication of he book based on the diary she kept over an eight-year period beginning in 1999, while she worked to reform Romanian adoption.

Her book reads like an exciting tale of mystery and espionage as she uncovers memos, files and emails that spell out a "point system" pitting American against Europeans as to who can pay more and thus get more children for adoption; phonied photos to make conditions look more dire than they are to increase private and public funding that seldom got to the children or the employees caring for them...as Roelie discovered on her field trips to the Romanian orphanages.

She also tells about her meeting with Belgian associations fighting child trade, and the Baroness who sought to stop - at least temporarily - the international adoption of Romanian children.
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http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/

For Information

Roelie Post publishes a remarkable book. A book about export of Romanian children for adoption. A book, that when one reads the first chapters, overwhelms you if the issue is new. Unfortunate for the undersigned it is not. I even wished that a similar empirical and personal book had been written by the sort of researcher as Roelie Post at the time in Korea and now in China.

Roelie Post dares to describe a taboo-issue at a level that can compare with the works of Noreena Hertz and the movie Constant Gardener. Unfortunately such reporting in general does not receive a lot of media attention, because of its political sensitivity. If you read the book, you find out why. A nest of scorpions of big (business) interests interwoven with political and social actors, and the large demand for adoptable children, creates indeed a market functioning that until now was systematically denied. As a result the discussion remained in the margins of society.

The introduction of the book about a mini-breakfast conference of her children concerning this issue illustrates in my opinion that we have gone far beyond the real and primary question, which still is: what is the interest of the (adoptive) child?

Best regards,
Hilbrand W.S. Westra
Coördinator - United Adoptees International - Netherlands

After one month...

The book is out now since one months and sales are not bad at all. The book is now also available in bookshops, for example Waterstone's in Brussels.

The book already found its way to 20 countries:

Australia, Belgium, Bosnia, Burkina Fasso, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Jordan, Morocco, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, the United States, Finland, Italy, United Kingdom, Zwitserland. And of course Romania.

The Guardian published this week the above cartoon to illustrate the Bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the UK.

Preface

Over the years numerous people suggested me to write a book. Here it is: the story of Romania’s institutionalised children, for many years wrongly called ‘orphans’ or ‘abandoned’ and the pressure to have those children freed for international adoption. A story about global politics and private interests.

In 1999, employed by the European Commission, I started working on the ‘Romanian children dossier’. Romania was known for having over 100.000 children in large residential care institutions, where the living conditions were appalling. My task would be to monitor Romania’s child protection from a human rights’ perspective in the framework of Romania’s future accession to the European Union. Furthermore the Commission would offer financial support to improve the situation. I entered a world I did not understand at first.

Soon I felt something was wrong with the adoption system.
The Romanian government, after criticism of the European Commission and the European Parliament, halted intercountry adoptions in 2001 and started to review its legislation. The international pressure, from a small group of people who wanted to re-open intercountry adoption, was extremely ferocious.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
The Year 1999 - Crisis
The Year 2000 - Forwards
The Year 2001 - Change
The Year 2002 - Progress & Resistance
The Year 2003 - EU Know-How
The Year 2004 - Children’s Rights are Law
The Year 2005 - Guerilla War
The Year 2006 - Open War
Epilogue
Acronyms & Initialism

UPDATE

The book has found its way to places as Australia, Jordan, Morocco, Greece, France, the UK, Portugal, Ireland, the United States, Finland, Italy, Zwitserland, Belgium and the Netherlands. And of course Romania.

Those who do not wish to pay through the Internet, can send an e-mail to

romaniaforexportonly@gmail.com

and you will receive the details for bank payments.