Joint declaration on intercountry adoption

Last night I listened to the attached audio file, a press conference held by Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Claire Gibault  and Francois de Combret. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, I don't know much about, but the other two names certainly rang a bell, having read Romania for Export Only.

After a brief introduction Maud de Boer-Buquicchio takes stage and without any back-up information dishes platitudes as "the child's best interest", "abandoned children in the streets of Romania" after which she lists a set of proposals to change European adoption policies.

Then Claire Gibault takes the stand and in a very confusing speech she tells about the many teen-agers in residential care, who desperately need a family before they age out of the system, hence promoting international adoption. This is a very peculiar twisting of facts. Most international adoptions pertain infants, not teen-agers, so opening up Romania for international adoption is not going to help this group at all and probably wouldn't benefit them at all when they were. What is the point in moving 14-15 year olds to another country, where they don't speak the language and as a result of that won't fit within the educational system.

I read Mrs. Gibault's words as an emotional appeal, to cover up the real agenda, opening up Romania for international adoption of infants. That was very well made clear by Mr. de Combret, who's self-congratulatory speech was a vile attempt to claim Romania's choice to close it's borders for international adoption was a mistake, of which thousands of children suffer today.

None of the contributers to this press conference mentioned the situation in Romania before the moratorium. They simply state the fact the moratorium was wrong and now European law has to change to force Romania to comply to their motivations for adoption legislation.

At the end of the press-conference some questions are asked. None of the pertaining to the real issue at hand, but instead on issues such as gay-couple adoption, which was briefly mentioned. The final question though related to one of the points Mrs. de Boer had presented: consent to adoption for children 14 years and older. When asked why 14? She said it was arbitrary such as any age in law is and when asked if that was based upon scientific study, she stammered that it was some average. An average of what? The average of the weight of a pack of cigarettes, the circumference of a bicycle tire and the air pressure around the Azores?

Clearly Mrs. de Boer shows no sign of knowing what she was talking about. The other two certainly do, but their two-faced attitude prevents them from telling what their real agenda is.

The joint declaration related to this press conference can be found here.

A critical expose of the press conference can be found on Brian Douglas' excellent blog All Children have Rights.