A question of goodwill
A question of goodwill
Fri, Mar 27 2009 10:00 CET byPetar Kostadinov 145 Views
Deputy Justice Minister Ilonka Raichinova
Photo: Maria Subotinova
Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva
Photo: Tsvetelina Nikolaeva
1 of 2
International adoptions is a sensitive issue everywhere. But here in Bulgaria it is particularly controversial because of the high number of children abandoned in the country’s 140 social homes. Much has changed in this field over the past 15 months and everyone in the process of international adoptions agrees that the changes have served the children’s best interests.
Those responsible for the improvements are two people who assumed their posts a couple of years ago, Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva and her deputy Ilonka Raichinova.
The change
As part of the former Soviet bloc, democratic Bulgaria inherited the problem of abandoned and unwanted children. For 45 years the state had been obliged to take care of such children. For better or worse this notion of state care continued to exist after the 1990 democratic changes. With democracy and the opening of the country to the world, many foreigners naturally showed an interest in adopting Bulgarian children. It wasn’t difficult, since the country’s legislation says that Bulgarian children can be put up for international adoption if there is no interest in the child’s adoption in Bulgaria. This "patriotic" concept failed to persuade Bulgarians to adopt children because stereotypes still prevailed against Roma children as well as those with special medical needs or serious problems.
To cope with the lack of interest in Bulgaria towards such children the state formed the Council on International Adoptions (CIA) under the jurisdiction of the Justice Ministry. The CIA was formed in 2003 as a result of amendments to the Family Code that gave foreign citizens the right to apply 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.
Those involved in the issue cite 2003 as a year of major change since it introduced a whole new system for international adoption of children in Bulgaria. Administrative supervision was ceded to the CIA so that the body processed and evaluated children’s documents and those of foreign candidates and made proposals to the Justice Minister for final approval.
Two registers were set up: one for the children and one for the candidates. The latter are represented by a number of NGOs accredited by the ministry to serve as intermediaries in international adoption procedures. The CIA is formed by representatives of all institutions involved in taking care of children in Bulgaria such as the Social and Labour Ministry, Education, Health and Foreign Ministries and the Agency for Child Protection, all in accordance with the Hague Convention and the Justice Ministry’s Ordinance Three, which stipulates conditions and procedures by which foreign nationals can adopt a person of Bulgarian nationality.
So far so good, but statistics for the period following the year of the "big change" showed that something was amiss.
In 2003 the number of foreign adoptions approved, given by the Justice Minister, was 595. In subsequent years the trend was downwards: 217 (2004), 101 (2005), 98 (2006) and 81 (2007). Obviously something had changed.
In December 2007 it became clear what had gone wrong. At a round table, organised by NGOs working in the field in Sofia’s Hotel Bulgaria, newly appointed deputy minister Raichinova had to face more than 100 disgruntled employees of both the NGOs and 140 social homes in Bulgaria. Discontent spilled over at the slow progress of international adoptions. Raichinova had just recently been appointed as a deputy minister as part of the team of Justice Minister Tacheva (a magistrate in the Black Sea city of Varna) who took office in the spring of 2007 after Georgi Petkanov resigned, citing personal reasons. A tax lawyer herself, Raichinova’s experience with Bulgaria’s institutions was at the Finance Ministry. Before Raichinova the CIA had been chaired by former deputy justice minister Margarit Ganev.
Pandora’s box
At this first encounter with those working in the field of international adoptions, Raichinova heard a long list of biting criticisms of the CIA’s work. The NGOs’ main concerns were about lack of transparency, excessive bureaucracy and the complete lack of response from the CIA. Stefka Djankova, head of a children’s home in Varna, decried "the limit imposed by the ministry on international adoptions for inexplicable and vague reasons".
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 between homes with no chance of leaving the system at all.
All agreed that there was no communication between the ministry and the NGOs and no one knew when the council held meetings. Applicants for adoption did not know their place on the register and were left in the dark about the progress of their requests. Candidates simply lost patience and gave up on adopting Bulgarian children as a consequence.
Many cited the problem of endless court procedures once a child is put on the register. These continued for years until the child simply grew older and the opportunity was missed. Part of the delay was attributed to the fact that abandoned children cannot be put up for adoption unless the mother gives her consent. In most cases, where babies are abandoned on the street or left in dustbins, the mother is unknown and children are left without any chance of adoption. NGOs suggested that should a mother leave her child in a home for more than six months without paying a visit the child could be declared eligible for adoption.
Also present at the round table was Deputy Justice Minister Ana Karaivanova, appointed in 2005 when Petkanov took office. "The ministry’s official position is that Bulgaria must take care of its children. International adoptions will be the last possibility," she told the NGOs.
As for Raichinova, she merely said "I have little experience in this sphere but I am learning fast and you can all depend on me as a partner."
Partners not foes
A year-and-a-half later the NGOs and the Ministry met again. On March 19 2009 there was a conference on international adoptions held in Sofia’s Sheraton Hotel. The first change was obvious. The 2007 meeting had been set up by the NGOs and Raichinova was just a guest. Now the Sheraton venue was co-hosted by the Ministry and the NGOs who stood next to each other on the podium. The NGOs were now represented by a newly formed body, an association of organisations accredited to serve as intermediaries in international adoption procedures.
The next change was that the 2009 forum was attended by more than 40 international organisations working in the field and by representatives of various bodies - the equivalent of the CIA from 14 countries - who have ratified the Hague Convention. The only similarity with the 2007 meeting was that although it was one of the largest venues in Sofia, the Sheraton Hall proved to be too small. The report, presented by Raichinova, said it all. Compared to 2007 when there were 81 approvals from the Justice Minister for children’s adoptions, in 2008 there were 169. In the first two-and-a-half months of 2009 alone there were 42, half the total numbers for 2006 and 2007. In 2008 CIA had 34 sessions, or one every week reviewing 1064 files of children. In 2007 the number of reviewed files was just 100. In 2006 it was just 94.
Moreover, the number of files of foreigners applying to adopt a Bulgarian child, reviewed by the CIA in 2008, was 866. In 2007 the figure was just 283.
The numbers speak for themselves about the improved efficiency in CIA’s work whose team was completely changed by Raichinova when she took office in November 2007. Karaivanova had long gone. So too had her view that international adoptions were not a priority for the ministry.
A new routine in the work of CIA was introduced. It now holds sessions every Tuesday and reviews a minimum of 20 files of children and 50 files of candidates seeking to adopt them. New criteria for selecting the candidates were introduced under the so called next on the list principle to avoid chaos and alleged corruption. These criteria were co-ordinated with the Association. In terms of the transparency of CIA’s work, Raichinova introduced the rule that at the end of each month CIA’s decisions are published on the ministry’s website with feedback available for those interested. An important change was expediting the process of filing children’s documents in the register once they have been sent to CIA. Now this takes up to two months. A great deal of inventory work has also been accomplished, enabling the registration of 344 children whose files had been pending review since 2004.
Problems
Raichinova did not just recite her successes. She also alluded to a number of issues that still hinder international adoptions. One such problem is the gaps in children’s files. This is extremely pressing for children with special needs. Files are sent to CIA by the regional social welfare directorates of Social and Labour Ministry and "many lack vital information about the child which ties our hands and deprives the child of any chance of adoption," she said. "I want to urge respective officials to deal with this problem that has been ongoing for years because behind every file there is a child," Raichinova said. She said that there were 86 files with gaps dating from 2004 and 2005, meaning that these 86 children’s lives were at a standstill.
Another problem was that, in many cases, medical evaluations of children described a grave condition. "Often these children appear to be healthy but an incorrect diagnosis has deprived them of the chance to be adopted. There are also cases of children with perfect medical records who actually have grave health problems. When their candidate-parents visit them they show no further interest in them." Raichinova supported the idea of filming children "when doctors in the country of the would-be parents need to make a good judgment about the care the child will need in its new environment". Many children abandoned in homes lacked parental consent for being put up for adoption which "slows or eliminates the process of their adoption".
To deal with that particular problem, the Ministry, together with the Association, has proposed an amendment to the Family Code that will give authorities the right to put a child up for adoption in case biological parents have withheld contact for six months. The amendment, also supported by the Social Ministry, is yet to be approved by Parliament. Court procedures were still too slow, she said.
Svetlana Dyankova, Deputy Social and Labour Policy Minister, was there to face some of Raichinova’s criticism. "There are 140 social homes and it is true that not all directors are equally competent. But we are trying and we are partners with the Justice Ministry in this field."
Ivelina Panova, director of the children’s home in the southern Bulgarian village of Bouzovgrad, supported the idea of children with medical problems being filmed. "My home is open to everyone who wants to come, see and play with the children and I don’t see why we can’t film them for the purpose of their adoption," she said. "Until we are allowed to do so, adoptions of children with special needs will continue to be stalled." Her words were cheered by many of the attendees. "I want to say that international adoption is not a dirty word; it is a way to remove children from institutions, which, after all, is our primary goal," she said.
Nikolai Elenkov, head of the Association, told The Sofia Echo that Raichinova had brought the work of the CIA to a new level. "It was a joint thing. We presented the problem and she reacted quickly." He feared that upcoming elections in the summer might slow the process. Raichinova expressed the same fear. "I hope that, if I am not a part of the new government, my dream of making the CIA a body with a permanent status will be fulfilled."