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 Despite conflicting pressures from the European Union and the United States, the Romanian government continues to move toward a total ban on international child adoptions. The legislation would make it nearly impossible for foreign families to adopt Romanian children, despite a shortage of Romanian families interested in domestic adoption.
According to a recent article in The Guardian, corruption had become rampant in Romanian adoption services, ratcheting the price of an adoption to tens of thousands of dollars. In many cases, adoption services also served as fronts for child trafficking and organ transplant rackets. As a result, the EU threatened Romania with the possibility of losing its bid to join the union if it did not address the problem.
However, the United States government is pressuring Romania to keep adoptions open. In the early 1990s, tens of thousands of Romanian children were adopted, many by U.S. families, following international broadcasts of abandoned children in squalid orphanages after the fall of communism in December 1989. Yet, according to Save the Children, some 50,000 children remain in these institutions; an additional 35,000 are essentially wards of the state.
As a result, American families interested in adopting these children have expressed outrage at legislation that keep them in institutions. World Vision Romania works to preserve families, often helping to reunite children with their birth parents. World Vision programs also teach mothers and fathers parenting skills and help them develop the job skills and support networks they need to raise their children. In addition, World Vision supports and promotes foster families for those children who cannot be reunited with their biological families.
“It is good that there is a new law,” said Laurentiu Zolotusca of World Vision Romania. “But this law does not fully respect the rights of the child.”
The Romanian senate passed the bill more than a month ago, and the lower house is due to vote on it within the next week and a half.
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