JCICS visit to Vietnam part 2

From: Mattingley, Donald G (Hanoi)

Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 8:53 PM

To: Aloisi, Jonathan M (Hanoi); Bond, Michele

Cc: Jacobs, Janice L; Furuta-Toy, Julie A; Bernier-Toti·i, Michelle; Michalak, Michael W (Hanoi); Alexander, Eric M (Hanoi) ; Boduszynski, Monica A (Hanoi); Jacobs, Janice L; Furul:a—Toy, Julie A; Bernier-Toth, Michelle; Brown, Melissa A; Preston, Courtney M (Hanoi); Lam, Monica M (Hanoi)

Subject: RE: JCICS visit to Vietnam ,

Hi Michele, U

A few additional points

[redacted]

Difilipo made an interesting point about the availability of better orphangage care, through American ASP support, being a contributing factor to the increase in numbers of orphans that we're seeing. it's the 'you build it and they will come"  theory, or as he put it 'a dentist opens up shop in the village and suddenly everyone has more problems with their teeth}

However, he didn‘t explain why the children are coming to these orphanages ovenivhelmingly through abandonments, why they are almost all newborn infants, and why so many abandonment stories are being fabricated. We think we know why because demand (backed by a lot of $$) for 'as young as possible infants" exceeds the number of infants in orphange and therefore incentivizes orphangage directors and ASP facilitators to use whatever means they can (baby buying, lying to biological parents, and perhaps worse) to meet this demand. The abandonments are used because they require less

documentation and provide better cover for whatever the true origins of the infant really are.

The disagreement over whether to limit adoptions in Vietnam comes down to explaining the phenomenon of abandonments and orphanges being filled with infants in Vietnam. That is why the idea to limit adoptions to older and special needs children makes sense. Until Vietnam has an effective "competent authority" in place, and until power is taken out of the hands of orphanage directors and placed into this competent authority’s hands, l do not see how we can continue to process infant cases. ln our field investigations, these cases are repeatedly the cause of concern, and from what we‘ve seen they are the cases most likely to involve serious violations of the law.

Sorry to bel long-winded!

regards,