Stop Illegal Child Trafficking of Ethiopian Children

The Children Of Ethiopia are in trouble. Ethiopia, one of the poorest country in the world is failing its orphans and poor children.

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism website encapsulates the whole adoption problem in Ethiopia in detail and backed by facts and numbers.

Well-informed sources have told the Schuster Institute that recent trends in Ethiopia’s international adoptions strongly suggest an increase in corruption. In the past, these have been signs that a country’s adoption system is shifting from “white” to “gray”—that is, from a well-regulated humanitarian effort dedicated to the children’s welfare, to a business that is taking children from living families in order to gain profits from Western adoption fees.

These signs include:

Rapidly expanding numbers of children being adopted internationally. For Ethiopia, the numbers of children sent in adoption climbed from a total of 262 in 2002 to more than 2520 in 2007—a tenfold expansion in five years.1 Similar increases have been seen in adoptions to other Western nations. This expansion outpaces regulators’ ability to oversee the system.

More than a dozen Western countries and several thousand prospective families waiting for Ethiopian children. Such high “demand,” combined with the possibility of earning a year’s income in adoption fees per child, can tempt unscrupulous locals to procure children for adoption at all costs.

Rapidly increasing numbers of adoption agencies working in the country, including: agencies that don’t have longstanding ties to the country or its child welfare efforts, and agencies not licensed by the Ethiopian government (as required) that are partnering or “umbrella’ing” with other agencies to serve clients.

Change in demographic profile of the children being adopted from the older children orphaned by their parents’ AIDS, TB, malaria, or other illnesses (the profile of the orphaned children already in the Ethiopian child welfare system); and
to healthy young female infants (who often turn out to have been solicited for the birth families specifically for the adoption trade).

In 2007, according to the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics Table 12, of the 1200 orphan visas from Ethiopia issued by the US, one-third—396—were for infants under one year of age, who are statistically less likely to be orphaned. Another one-third, or 430, were between the ages of one and four years.

Fraud on the children’s documents about such facts as their real ages and whether they were abandoned or relinquished by families.

In other countries, all these have been signals that children were being bought, defrauded, coerced, or kidnapped away from their birth families.

Source: http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/ethiopia.html

FLY AWAY CHILDREN

A powerful documentary exposing the dark side of adoption presented by Mr Adrew Gehogen , a reporter for Foreign Correspondent a ABC Australia TV Network popular program.

According to the documentary:

Some adopting parents suspect or discover the new child they’ve taken in is not an orphan as they’d been assured. The child may also have a litany of health problems that has been covered up by corrupt officials.

Also many ‘relinquishing’ Ethiopian parents or carers may have been duped into giving up their children through a heartless process called ‘harvesting’ and can’t hope to re-establish contact with them. A group of grieving mothers who have given up their children for international adoption gather at an orphanage to tell their stories. All claim they were told by adoption agencies they would receive regular information about the whereabouts and well being of their children, but have heard nothing.

Source:http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2686908.htmhttp://

This petition is for the attention of:

US State Department
http://www.state.gov/
European Union
http://www.eurunion.org/eu/
UNICEF
http://www.unicef.org/
Hope For Children
http://www.hopeforchildren.org.au/
Human Capital Foundation
http://www.selamta.org/
Christian International Adoption Agency
http://www.cwa.org/