Nepal meet calls for adoption reform
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Nepal meet calls for adoption reform
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KATHMANDU: Adoption groups gathered in Nepal yesterday to press for new laws in the Himalayan nation to end what critics say is widespread abuse of the current system, including children for sale. The NGO federation organised the three-day meeting in concert with Nepal’s ministry of women, children and social affairs, and delegates from 14 countries. A crippling level of poverty in Nepal - where annual per capita income is $240 - and endemic corruption had caused concern that agents and orphanages profited by selling children to Westerners, a government minister said. Some of the children were not orphans, he added. “There are big gangs in the capital involved in selling children in the name of adoption,” Urmila Aryal, Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare told local media on Saturday. The official paperwork to adopt a Nepali child costs about $300, but child welfare groups say people pay as much as $20,000, and the lure of the cash has led to a racket to sell children. “District administrations and police are not paying enough attention to controlling such crimes,” Aryal said. France recently banned its citizens coming to Nepal to adopt individually, and now requires they go through agencies approved by the French ministry of foreign affairs. The change was needed because of a “growing lack of transparency” and a “great deal of uncertainty” about whether the children being put up for adoption were actually orphans, the French foreign ministry said. “Children are basically being sold,” said a source involved in the adoption process who requested anonymity. There are about 200 orphanages in the Kathmandu Valley and some deal directly with prospective parents – especially with single women from abroad, who can adopt legally in Nepal – instead of via officially registered agencies. With a seven-month-old Nepali girl sleeping soundly at her feet, French national Marie Guerci recently said that she paid about $6,000 for the adoption, but she “knew parents who had paid a lot more.” Guerci’s daughter Eva was registered as an orphan abandoned at birth in a public place close to Kathmandu. But she admits there is no way to verify the story. “The origins of the children should be more clear,” the 42-year-old Frenchwoman said recently as she completed documentation to bring her new baby back to Paris. Child welfare officials said many parents were willing to place their children for adoption to ensure a better life for them, and used fake papers to do so. “They are willing to give their sons and daughters for adoption for a better future,” Basudev Uprety, a member of the legal department with Nepal’s ministry of women, children and social welfare. Although there was a complex legal process for foreigners to adopt Nepali children “fabricated documents about children cannot be ruled out,” Uprety said recently. As a result, Nepal minister of state for women, children and social welfare told the conference yesterday the country planned to reform the adoption process through legislation. “A new act on adoption is essential,” Aryal said at the opening of the conference. An interim government formed in January following a peace deal between political parties and Maoist rebels has yet to resolve power-sharing issues, including cabinet posts, or agreed on a legislative agenda. The peace deal ended a decade of civil war. – AFP |
2007 Mar 12