Romania Urged to Amend Adoption Ban

Bucharest comes under pressure from European Union and the United States to resume international adoptions.

By Denisa Maruntoiu in Bucharest (Balkan Insight, 4 May 06)

A group of lawmakers from the European Union parliament is urging Romania to review a ban on international child adoption just as the European Commission prepares to publish a major report on Romanian and Bulgarian progress injoining the union. The European assembly signalled last week that it would be writing to Romanian president Traian Basescu calling on him to amend the currentrestrictive adoption law. The move follows calls from the US Congress andadoptive parents' organisations in America, who say the ban - introduced in January this year - will harm rather than protect Romanian orphans.

A European Commission report looking at the steps taken by Bucharest and Sofia towards accession is due out in two weeks. EU parliamentarians may be hoping the publication of such an important report will prompt the Romanian leadership to agree to their recommendations. EU lawmakers last week said they agreed with an earlier moratorium on international adoptions that Romania had imposed in order to address corruption problems, but they warned that the outright ban introduced in January could endanger the lives of orphans.

"Following the enforcing of the ban, many children were sent back to their biological families, thus being often neglected and abused," said Dr Charles Tannock, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament.

These fears are shared by US Congressman Jeb Bradley, who said that international adoption could benefit Romanian children who are currently in care.

"According to Theodora Bertzi [the head of the National Adoption Agency] there were 76,509 children in Romania's child protection system as of end last year. It is statistically impossible for all of these children to have been placed domestically, as the Romanian government claims," said Bradley in an interview with Balkan Insight.

"The 1,100 families worldwide that are trying to adopt these Romanian orphans have made a loving and long-term commitment to their well-being."

Campaigners who have long lobbied for an end to foreign adoptions in Romania are also now demanding that these restrictions be relaxed. Would-be parents in the United States and other western countries have repeatedly called on Romania, which wants to join the EU next year, to rescind the law.

Among those would-be parents are Allyson and Michael Schaaf, who for four years have been fighting to adopt Natasha, a now four-year-old Romanian orphan living in a children's home in Romania.

Natasha is one of the 1,100 orphans, known as "pipeline children", whose adoptions were initiated after Romania enforced its moratorium on international adoptions in 2001, following allegations from EU officials that most of the Romanian children sent abroad for adoption ended up being abused or sold on the black market.

For four years, the Schaafs have fought to bring the child to New Hampshire. They encountered their latest obstacle on April 16, when together with Bradley, they travelled to Brussels to meet EU and Romanian officials in a last desperate bid to bring Natasha home.

But the couple received bad news. They were told by Lazar Comanescu, Romania's ambassador to the EU, that Natasha had been assigned for adoption by a Romanian family. The envoy also reiterated that foreign adoption applications submitted prior to the introduction of the law would not now be processed.

Allyson Schaaf was devastated by the news, and believes it was a political manoeuvre intended to block further discussion of her family's case. "It clearly is in direct retaliation for the fact that we were in Brussels," she said.

The collapse of communism 16 years ago sent couples like the Schaafs rushing to adopt children from Romania. Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu imposed a ban on contraception and abortion which lasted from 1966 to when he was overthrown in 1989. This led to an explosion in the birthrate in Romania, and when Ceausescu's regime ended, more than 100,000 children were found living in squalid orphanages.

During the Nineties, tens of thousands of Romanian children were adopted by families from the US and western Europe. The booming trade in babies soon became big business, involving organised crime rackets and corrupt court and government officials, sending the cost of adoption soaring to tens of thousands of dollars.

Those behind the baby-trafficking business often had connections to child prostitution and organ-transplant rackets. The links between adoption and organised crime led the EU to warn Romania that its accession prospects would be jeopardised unless the Romanian authorities clamped down on the trade in children. Bucharest responded first with a moratorium and, in January this year, with the outright ban. In December, the European parliament asked Romania to carry out a final review of about 1,400 adoption applications made while the moratorium was in force. Late last month Romania rejected all applications from foreigners seeking to adopt a child.

Bucharest officials insist they are doing a good job in overhauling the country's child welfare system and removing children from the horrendous conditions found in the large orphanages.

"This is the final decision. Unfortunately, there is no other solution for the foreign families who wanted to adopt children in Romania," said Theodora Bertzi, head of the National Adoption Agency.

"I am sorry for the foreign families who are now in great pain, but they must understand that a local solution is better for the children."

Bertzi argues that there is no need for international adoptions.

"This year, we have only 850 children who are adoptable and approximately 2,000 Romanian families who want to adopt a child. Why then allow inter-country adoptions?" she asked, insisting that conditions for parentless children are now far better than four or five years ago.

But official figures suggest otherwise. There are still around 45,000 children in the care of "surrogate families" - either relatives or foster families - and a further 32,000 in the care of the social services "with maternal assistance", which means they receive visits from their mother.

Demand for foster families in Romania has also increased dramatically. Ten years ago, there were none, but today there are almost 18,000, each taking care of at least one child and receiving local authority funds.

Allyson Schaff will continue to fight to take her daughter home and has requested a meeting with the Romanian president.

"I will continue to work not only for our daughter, but all the abandoned children of Romania," she said.

Denisa Maruntoiu, a journalist with the Bucharest Daily News publication, is a contributor to Balkan Insight, BIRN'S online publication.