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The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption was agreed upon in 1993 at the Hague Conference on Private International Law to address growing allegations of abduction, sale, and trafficking of children around the world. The Hague Convention guides countries to attend to the “best interest of the child” in making decisions on intercountry adoptions, and to apply the “principle of subsidiarity,” which calls for the consideration of family and kinship placement and national adoption prior to the consideration of intercountry adoption. This dissertation research focused on the experience of Guatemalan mothers reporting the abduction of their children for intercountry adoption. It examines implications for human rights and the child welfare system. In countries where child abduction allegations have been widespread, illegal adoption has been found to be a common practice and is the result of international child trafficking. Large financial gains are implicated in this type of organized crime, which appears to promote baby selling. In countries enacting the Hague Convention, the continuation of these allegations points to the governments’ inability to prosecute and penalize those responsible. Illegal adoptions pose significant threats to the ethical standards set by the Central Authorities established to implement the Hague Convention. Child abduction has been found to complicate and delay the determination of adoptability, and to undermine due process for legitimate intercountry adoptions. Child abduction has profound effects on grieving mothers and their families after the loss of their children with no resolution in sight. This constructivist research documents the story of three Guatemalan women who reported to public authorities the separate and unrelated abduction of their respective daughters in 2006. The case study report is a “thick description” of the lived experience of these mothers before, during, and after the child theft. The narration comprises an interpretation of their experience, or the participants’ meaning-making of such experience. Based on the mothers’ accounts, their victimization at the hands of child traffickers was followed by victimization by public authorities, who did not exercise due diligence in these child abduction cases. After these survivors exhausted their individual searches for their children, they approached the Fundación Sobrevivientes, who provided them with legal representation and psychosocial support. Together with other mothers, these women publicly advocated for their rights and the rights of their children. Their collective response to this form of violence was critical to accessing the case files in which they identified their abducted children. By engaging in individual legal claims, the participating mothers have sought nullification of each intercountry adoption and the prosecution of those involved in the corresponding illegal and corrupt activities. To conduct this constructivist inquiry, the researcher spent a year in Guatemala, completing prior ethnography for the emerging design and carrying out the interviews. This involved engaging participants with the researcher in a “dialectic hermeneutic process” through multiple “waves” of interviews (at the personal, practice, and policy levels), concluding with two phases of “member checking” or participants’ review of the research findings. To enhance rigor, besides analyzing the relevant literature, the process involved peer and translation reviewers and consultations with national and international scholars with relevant knowledge and expertise, including dissertation committee members. The four elements of the working definition of child abduction developed from the literature review (child theft, deceptive, coercion, and fraud) and other hypothesis on child abduction were confirmed in the mothers’ stories and by the research participants. The tentative findings or lessons identified in this constructivist inquiry should not be considered generalizable, but as “joint constructions” or co-creations between the research participants and the researcher. Based on general guidelines, the readers are encouraged to make their own assessment of the case report, and decide on whether the findings are relevant or may be replicable in other contexts.

<p>In order to study internationally adopted delinquents, internationally adopted controls, delinquent controls and an additional group of healthy non-adopted, non-delinquent controls, the following tests were used: WISC/WAIS, TOL, WCST, a questionnaire, I think I am, ISSI, an attachment test, KSP, and SCL-90. In the register study, data were obtained from the registers of The National Board of Health and Welfare and Statistics Sweden and multivariate analyses were performed using logistic regression models. Odds ratios (OR) for different forms of out-of-home care placements were calculated.</p><p>It was found that the adopted delinquents had a significantly lower full scale IQ (WISC/WAIS) and significantly lower results on several measurements in the WISC /WAIS compared to the adopted controls. In addition, both groups of adoptees scored low in the WISC/WAIS subscale arithmetics when compared to the population mean. The adopted delinquents clearly had disruptive and infectious relations to their parents which was demonstrated in I think I am, ISSI, the attachment test and the questionnaire. The adopted controls demonstrated good relations to adoptive parents. When personality and self-perception were measured and analyzed in a two-way ANOVA, the results clearly pointed to ”delinquency” as the explaining factor to the variance of the results as opposed to ”adoption”. </p><p>Finally, the regression analyses of the register data demonstrated an OR of 3.0 (after adjustments for age and sex) for placements of intercountry adoptees in residental care from age 10 and an OR of 5.1 in model 2 (after adjustments for socio-demographic background variables). More over, higher child age at adoption, origin from Latin America, single parent adoption and maternal age above 35 at birth of the child were identified as significant predictors of out-of-home care from age 10.</p>

In order to study internationally adopted delinquents, internationally adopted controls, delinquent controls and an additional group of healthy non-adopted, non-delinquent controls, the following tests were used: WISC/WAIS, TOL, WCST, a questionnaire, I think I am, ISSI, an attachment test, KSP, and SCL-90. In the register study, data were obtained from the registers of The National Board of Health and Welfare and Statistics Sweden and multivariate analyses were performed using logistic regression models. Odds ratios (OR) for different forms of out-of-home care placements were calculated. It was found that the adopted delinquents had a significantly lower full scale IQ (WISC/WAIS) and significantly lower results on several measurements in the WISC /WAIS compared to the adopted controls. In addition, both groups of adoptees scored low in the WISC/WAIS subscale arithmetics when compared to the population mean. The adopted delinquents clearly had disruptive and infectious relations to their parents which was demonstrated in I think I am, ISSI, the attachment test and the questionnaire. The adopted controls demonstrated good relations to adoptive parents. When personality and self-perception were measured and analyzed in a two-way ANOVA, the results clearly pointed to ”delinquency” as the explaining factor to the variance of the results as opposed to ”adoption”. Finally, the regression analyses of the register data demonstrated an OR of 3.0 (after adjustments for age and sex) for placements of intercountry adoptees in residental care from age 10 and an OR of 5.1 in model 2 (after adjustments for socio-demographic background variables). More over, higher child age at adoption, origin from Latin America, single parent adoption and maternal age above 35 at birth of the child were identified as significant predictors of out-of-home care from age 10.

For the past 60 years, American citizens have turned to international adoption as a way to build their families. Unfortunately, international adoptees often spend the first months or years of their young lives in conditions of poverty and/or institutionalized care. Additionally, current U.S. immigration laws dictate that the children receive only a cursory health screening before arrival. As a result, many of the children adopted by Americans arrive to the United States with significant physical, emotional, behavioral, and developmental health problems. Twelve mothers who had adopted children internationally were interviewed for this study. Their stories of obtaining health care for their newly adopted children were shared in descriptive narratives. The themes that emerged from the data analysis were seeing healthy children despite the challenges, struggling to help the children, needing help, missing lost pieces, being different, and wanting more from providers. The overall essence derived from the mothers' experiences was that seeking health care for their newly adopted children was one of hope to achieve wellness for their children and normalcy for their families within the context of loss and a desire for more support. These findings have significant implications for the health care providers who care for them. / by Natalie L. Murphy. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Questa tesi intende completare uno studio sull'impatto che la legislazione sull'adozione ha sul processo dell'adozione internazionale, con lo scopo di determinare se le imprecisioni della legislazione offrono delle opportunità per la commissione di abusi collegati all'adozione internazionale, per individuare quali provvedimenti della legislazione possono essere sfruttati dai criminali e quali metodi e meccanismi possono essere sviluppati per rendere la legislazione sull'adozione crime proofed . L'ipotesi principale di lavoro è che una legislazione sull'adozione di bassa qualità produce delle opportunità criminali per la corruzione ed il compimento di adozioni internazionali illegali, mentre una legislazione di alta qualità riduce tali opportunità. Per verificare quest'ipotesi, due legislazioni nazionali sull'adozione sono comparate, attraverso una comparazione orizzontale di due sistemi nazionali di adozione ed il completamento di un Crime Risk Assessment delle rispettive legislazioni (in così detto crime proofing ex post ). Il primo elemento di questa comparazione orizzontale è la precedente legge sull'adozione romena (Legge No. 25/1997), mentre il secondo, determinato attraverso un'analisi selettiva, è la legislazione lettone. / This thesis aims to conduct a study on the impact that adoption legislation has on the intercountry adoption process, with the purpose of determining if inaccuracies in legislation offer opportunities for abuses related to intercountry adoption, which provisions of legislation may be exploited by the criminals and which methods or mechanisms may be developed in order to render adoption legislation crime proofed . The main working hypothesis is that low quality adoption legislation produces criminal opportunities for corruption and the concluding of illegal adoptions, while high quality adoption legislation reduces such criminal opportunities. In order to test this hypothesis, two national adoption legislations are considered and compared, by use of a horizontal comparison of the two adoption systems and the carrying out of a Crime Risk Assessment of the two legislations on adoption (the so called crime proofing ex post ). The first component of this horizontal comparison is the former Romanian adoption law (Law No. 25/1997), while the second one, determined after the completing of a selective analysis, is the Latvian adoption legislation.

The years 2010 and 2011 recorded a number of incidents of natural disasters around the globe. These disasters resulted in death, injuries and loss of family members. Children, a vulnerable group of persons, found themselves caught up in the chaos of the natural disasters. Some children lost family members, others became separated from their families and caregiver(s) as a result of the disaster, and those who were "alone" prior to the natural disasters became completely exposed to serious physical and psychological harm. Yet, every child has the right to a family. States have a duty to protect separated and unaccompanied children. Such protection involves prevention of separation, assessment of the child's situation, registration, documentation, family tracing, verification and reunification, emergency care arrangements, and permanent care arrangements. Based on the premise that every child has a right to grow up in a family environment this dissertation attempts to answer the question: How can separated children and unaccompanied children, in the African context, be protected in the event of natural disasters such that their right to a family is promoted and protected? In so doing, it presents an explanation of the concepts of separated children and unaccompanied children through investigation xii into the practical effects of separation on children. It also presents discussions on the concept "natural disasters" and some of the effects of natural disasters on separated children and unaccompanied children. There is an attempt at defining the concept "family" based on its internal and external constitution and function, and a consideration of the needs which a family should satisfy in a child. Familial rights enjoyed by children are presented and analysed as rights which exist under the canopy of the "right to a family". In line with the Interagency Guiding Principles, the different stages of protection in natural disasters are highlighted and particular attention is given to intercountry adoption and the implications of placing moratoriums on intercountry adoptions at different stages of the intercountry adoption process, following events of natural disasters. The study stresses the need to balance the importance of protecting the child with the need to provide the child with a permanent family. Copyright / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Private Law / unrestricted

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The views of minority groups who speak on behalf of adopted children in Western countries like Sweden have relevance with regards to enriching the international adoption discourse; and to inform adoption policies in both sending and receiving countries. This study aimed at seeking the views of African immigrants in Sweden on intercountry adoption with the objective of bringing out the meanings they create on the major themes involved to enrich the international adoption debate and to inform policy formation. In all, twenty (20) participants who were grouped into Six (6) focus groups participated. There were mixed opinions on various themes involved. Some of their perspectives were consistent with previous political discourses on adoptions and others were not. These were discussed in the analysis accordingly. Contrary to international conventions, participants showed much relevance to intercountry adoption as against incountry adoption. However, there were predominant views in support of child adoption that is well regulated.