Inter-country adoption: who facilitates whom

As of September 2009, the U.S. State Department recognizes 232 adoption agencies, accredited under the Hague convention. All of these agencies are allowed to participate in inter-country adoption with other Hague countries.

Some of these 232 agencies are not directly involved in foreign countries at all.  Instead, some mainly focus on doing home studies and facilitate the placement of children through other, often out of state, adoption agencies that do have foreign programs. This type of agency doesn't list any adoption programs on its website because it usually cooperates with any adoption agency prospective adopters choose to work with.

There are some other agencies that don't really work abroad themselves but do list various country programs. In these situations, the agency obtains children through another adoption agency with whom they have a contractual agreement.

Most adoption agencies, however, run some foreign programs themselves, while cooperating with other, often out-of state, agencies for the remainder of their programs.

While these are all legal agreements under the Hague convention*, it is sometimes hard to figure out who actually facilitates whom. Some agencies list their partners on their websites prominently, others do so in fine print.  Still, there are those agencies that don't mention their partnerships at all.

For those Hague accredited agencies where we were able to find out facilitation relations, we compiled the following table, which also includes country programs that do not fall under the Hague convention.

* Russia, not being a Hague country does not allow umbrella'ing.