NEW YORK (AP) — Ethiopia, which has become the No. 2 source country for children adopted by Americans, implemented changes Thursday that could reduce the number of foreign adoptions by up to 90 percent, the State Department said.
U.S. adoption advocates reacted with dismay, and
launched a petition drive urging Ethiopia to reconsider. The State Department
warned that pending applications to adopt from Ethiopia could encounter
"significant delays" — perhaps an extra six month or more.
The new policy, intended to reduce instances of
fraud and ease a heavy workload at Ethiopia's youth ministry, marks a dramatic
turnaround for a country that — in the eyes of adoption advocates in the U.S. —
had been a rare international bright spot in recent years.
According to State Department figures, 2,513
Ethiopian children were adopted by Americans in the 2010 fiscal year, second
only to China as a source country. Ethiopia had been one of the few nations to
significantly increase adoptions to the U.S. at a time when overall foreign
adoptions by Americans were dropping by 50 percent from the peak of 22,884 in
2004.
Although U.S. adoption advocates had been concerned
about adoption fraud in Ethiopia, several of them described the policy change
as an overreaction that had caught them by surprise.
The plan "is a tragic, unnecessary and
disproportionate reaction to concerns of isolated abuses," said the Joint
Council on International Children's Services, a nonprofit which supports
adoption and other services for vulnerable children.
The council's president, Tom DiFilipo, said he
remained hopeful that the policy might be reversed or modified so that
adoptions could proceed at a substantial level while undergoing greater
scrutiny.
According to the State Department, Ethiopia's new
policy calls for its Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs to process
no more than five adoption cases per day — about 10 percent of the caseload it
had been handling.
Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for
Adoption, said Ethiopia has been making "significant progress" in
improving its adoption process. He said State Department officials and adoption
experts from various countries were trying to persuade Ethiopia to scrap or
soften the new policy while seeking further improvements.
"We are encouraged by the advocacy taking
place behind the scenes and hopeful that these collective efforts will bring
clarity and an immediate adjustment to this unjust and unnecessary
ruling," Johnson said.
The State Department said the U.S. government,
other foreign countries and several non-governmental organizations had been
offering to assist Ethiopia in further upgrading of its adoption and
child-welfare systems.
In all, more than 4,000 Ethiopian children were
adopted by foreigners last year, with the U.S. the largest destination, but
large numbers also going to several Western European countries.
Adoption advocates said the new policy would result
in thousands of Ethiopian children languishing for longer periods in institutions
struggling to provide adequate services for them. In all, the impoverished
African country has an estimated 5 million orphans and homeless children.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
