International adoption campaign stirs new controversy

By Denisa Maruntoiu

Following the publication in Monday's edition of British daily Financial Times of a full-page advertisement entitled "Romania's concealed childcare crisis" completed by 33 NGOs which denounced the child protection system in Romania as ignoring the Romanian orphans and pointed out that EU officials have no idea about the traumas the orphans are subjected to in the Romanian institutions, the former EP's rapporteur on Romania, Baroness Emma Nicholson, rejected all the allegations. She pointed out that the non-governmental organizations that have signed the document have a strong financial interest in the resumption of the highly profitable international adoptions business.

In a letter to the editor entitled "Romania banned international adoptions as an evil trade in children" published yesterday by Financial Times, Nicholson said that Romania banned international adoptions in 2001 because it had turned into a trade.

"Adoptive parents were taken for a ride by unscrupulous adoption agencies; children were illegally selected based on photo and video presentations and the social services were bypassed," said the MEP, adding that the ban was a brave decision and has been upheld by successive Romanian governments that have done well reforming their child welfare system and stopping children being institutionalized.

"It would be madness to re-introduce international adoptions now," said Nicholson, pointing out that in her opinion the pro-adoption lobby is continually "peddling false information" about the number of children abandoned in Romania. The baroness said that all the information in the advertisement sounds very dramatic and terrible but is not true."

Unless these abandoned children are hidden away in some secret location (perhaps the "secret CIA prisons"), the pro-adoption lobby should inform us where these tens of thousands of abandoned children are kept. To find out the truth of the situation, one just has to make a random visit to any child hospital in Romania," stressed Nicholson.

The former EP rapporteur on Romania also said that her name is often used by the pro-adoption lobby as the bete noire who has a peculiar obsession with international adoptions as it makes for good lobby practice to blame all these ills on one person. "The lobby consistently fails to mention the fact that my views are in line with the child rights experts who have consulted extensively in Romania on behalf of the European Union, the United Nations agencies and USAID," concluded Nicholson.

As the advertisement in Financial Times also stated that the authorities do not protect the children abused by their families and do not punish those guilty of molesting the children and compared the Romanian orphanages with the Guantanamo detention facility, the head of the Child Protection Authority (ANPDC), State Secretary Bogdan Panait, said the advert in the British newspaper represents a new attack against Romania.

"The organizations that signed that document are some small NGOs operating in Romania as well. Some of them used to intermediate international adoptions and this makes me think the attack is part of the campaign meant to force us to resume the international adoptions," said Panait yesterday. In addition, an ANPDC press release noted that all the pressures coming from both Europe and the U.S. aim at resuming the "export of children" and that the attacks against the child protection system prove all these actions are "orchestrated by foreign interest groups."

The head of the Romanian Office for Adoptions, State Secretary Theodora Bertiz, also said yesterday she is outraged by the strong pressure coming from lobby groups that are trying to convince the EU lawmakers to call on Romania to resume international adoptions.

"It seems those groups are behind an international media campaign that is being financed with huge amounts of money. They should have used the money to help the orphans instead of using them to ruin Romania's image," said Bertzi, adding that it is unacceptable for the progress achieved in the child protection field not to be acknowledged.

"We still have lots of things to improve, but this does not mean we should erase everything we did by now," said Bertzi.