Talking about adoptions
Talking about adoptions
17:00 Fri 14 Dec 2007 - Petar Kostadinov
After two and a half years, the Justice Ministry and the organisations accredited by it to serve as intermediaries in international adoption procedures made a breakthrough in their communication.
The breakthrough was that the two sides finally met on December 11 at a round table organised by organisations working in the field. Despite the fact that Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva did not attend the meeting, the ministry, represented by Deputy Ministers Ilonka Raichinova and Ana Karaivanova, had more than three hours to hear the opinion of the organisations about the problems of international adoptions in Bulgaria. The NGOs took full advantage of the opportunity of having the officials responsible for international adoptions and spared little criticism about the procedures followed by the ministry.
As The Sofia Echo reported previously, the organisations’ main concerns were about had been the lack of transparency, the bureaucracy and the complete lack of response from the ministry’s council on international adoptions, the body in charge of all adoptions of Bulgarian children by foreign citizens.
The initial reason for the round table was the amendments to the Family Code that are supposed to happen in 2008, as well as the current provisions in the ministry’s Ordinance 3, which specifies the conditions and procedure for consent to the adoption of a person of Bulgarian nationality by a foreigner.
The amendments to the code might change the legislation’s provisions about international adoptions. NGOs presented their proposals to the ministry.
The council on international adoptions was formed in 2003 as a result of amendments at the time to the Family Code that gave foreign citizens the right to be candidates to adopt Bulgarian children. It was a direct consequence of the Hague Adoption Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of International Adoption ratified by Bulgaria’s Parliament in 2002.
The council was headed by then deputy justice minister Margarit Ganev. Registers of the names of children eligible for international adoptions and of foreign citizens wanting to adopt Bulgarian children were compiled.
According to Krassimira Natan of the Bulgarian branch of Friends of the Children, in 2005 out of the 2058 children in the register, the number of those adopted by foreigners was 108. In 2006 there were 2266 children on the register, with 103 adopted by foreigners, and by October 31 2007 international adoptions were 51 out of 2557 children on the register. The number of children adopted by Bulgarians was about 600 in each of these years.
“What this shows is that the number of international adoptions is going down with each year,” Natan said.
Stefka Djankova, head of a children's home in Varna on the Black Sea coast, had the same opinion.
“In 1998 we had 106 adoptions, of which 43 were by foreign citizens. In 2002, the number of such adoptions was 62, but since then things changed dramatically and in the first 10 months of this year we had just four children adopted by foreigners.”
A reason for this negative trend, according to Djankova, was the “limit imposed by the ministry on international adoptions for inexplicable and vague reasons. I have personally called the ministry through the years and asked them to find a family for a child with a minor health problem, and the answer I got was that there was not a suitable family for such a child, and that I was not the person to change things”.
According to Djankova, children with health problems were not added to the register even though their documents had been sent by the relevant social care home. The result, she said, was that these children were being transferred from one home to another with no chance of leaving the system at all.
“What has to be changed is the court procedures. Right now we have endless court procedures if a child is to be put on the register. Sometimes the procedures go on for years and the child simply grows older and the opportunity is missed,” Djankova said.
Her opinion was shared by Georgi Kremenliev of Childhood without Borders, who said that international adoptions in Bulgaria had been, in effect, put on hold. “There is no dialogue between the ministry and the NGOs. The Ministry’s International Legal Child Protection and International Adoptions Directorate do not even have reception hours.
No one knows when the council holds meetings. All we know is that it meets twice a month if there is a quorum. Candidates don’t know what their place is on the register and what is happening with their request. Next to that, we don’t know what the criteria are for selecting candidate families and why there have to be three candidate families for each child in order for the child to be adopted by foreigners,” Kremenliev said.
For Nikolai Elenkov, also working in the NGO sector on adoption issues, was that there was no provision in law about the time limit which the ministry has after the documents of a child are forwarded to the council.
“Right now, no one can make the council act quickly because there is no time limit set by the law. This time limit should be set at seven months at the most. Otherwise, we have children that reach the age of 18 waiting for their documents to be processed by the council, even though there might be a family that is ready to adopt them.
Furthermore, in order to stop the chaos and any alleged corruption, I suggest that the principle on which candidate families are picked once being approved by the council as eligible for adopting children is that they are next on the list,” Elenkov said.
Anzhela Krusteva, of the National Association Family, firmly supported Elenkov.
“We have clients calling us and their embassies asking what is happening with their application documents and all we can tell them is that we don’t know. Because of this complete lack of transparency and information, candidates simply lose patience and give up on adopting Bulgarian children.
Deputy Minister Ana Karaivanova, who has been in the ministry since 2005, said that she would consider the proposals tabled by the NGOs.
“I highly welcome such forums and some of the proposals could be implemented almost immediately, such as the response time of the directorate. However, the ministry’s official position is that Bulgaria must take care of its children. International adoptions will be the last possibility. I accept the criticism and I know that we lack efficiency, but we have taken measures.”
As for selecting candidate families on the basis that they are next on the register, Karaivanova said she highly disapproved the principle.
“We are talking about children here, not TV sets as it was under communism when there was a waiting list for everything. What we should do is prevent Roma women giving birth to their 15th child.”
The ray of hope came from the person who legally has the biggest influence on the process of international adoptions in Bulgaria. Appointed as deputy minister on November 12 this year, lawyer Ilonka Raichinova is the new head of the council.
“I have little experience in this sphere but I am learning fast. While listening, I wrote down about 10 pages and I think that some of your proposals are great. However, I would not accept criticism thrown at the ministry simply because we apply the law. That said, you can all depend on me as a partner and I agree that the council should speed up its work. Its first session will be on December 13. I will publish information in advance about the meeting so that all those involved in the council will have no excuse for not having it on their monthly schedule,” Raichinova said.
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