Family affairs
How is Ukraine monitoring children adopted by foreigners?
News about Elton John’s intention to adopt a Ukrainian child made waves in the media recently. The singer only stated that on a visit to an orphanage, he instantly took to a baby boy Lev and was ready to adopt him. As it was revealed later, Elton John did not actually file a request for adoption; moreover, he is not entitled to do so. But the news rocked all the major western Internet sites concerned with celebrities. Yet it was noted that Ukrainian legislation on adoption is very strict, and children in this country will not be given to anyone who would fancy becoming an adoptive parent.
No wonder, for the adoption of children from developing countries has long become fashionable with western celebrities. The Jolie-Pitt family is a case in point: three out of their six children are adopted (two boys, Vietnamese and Cambodian, and an Ethiopian girl). The public will also remember a recent scandal caused by Madonna’s failed adoption of a Malawian child: the singer ventured to adopt another baby from the African republic of Malawi, but a local court banned the adoption. The biological mother of two, Madonna adopted a Malawian child following a lengthy process in 2006–08. This summer she obtained a permission to adopt another child from Malawi.
The problem of “celebrity” adoption is very contradictory. Many condemn this practice as a thoughtless pursuit of a fashionable trend without actually caring for the children, who will eventually have to play the role of an accessory and spend more time with nannies than with their new parents. Others openly deride the new fashion. For example, one of the tenors in Sasha Baron Cohen’s new parody Bruno (banned in Ukraine) is mocking the celebrities’ false love for “poor babies” from the third-world countries.
This fashion (for most celebrities adoption is not much of a financial burden) now borders on absurdity. Last week, a third-rate Hollywood actress Katherine Heigl outdid Elton John and adopted a disabled Korean girl. I’m afraid that the little sick Korean was chosen only to impress the media, which would otherwise have ignored Katherine’s charitable act.
That is why the news of Elton John, who could not adopt a Ukrainian child, was nothing short of a shock. Yurii Pavlenko, Ukraine’s Minister for Family, Youth, and Sport, aptly explained the legal reasons to the journalists.
The effective scheme of legally established norms for adoption positions Ukraine above other countries where one might perhaps even buy a child (for instance, in Guatemala). We might even proudly declare that the case of Elton John was a kind of indicator proving that Ukraine is not a third-world country. The mechanism of adoption in this country is quite effective, and adoption norms are rather strict. A prospective adoptive parent (a citizen of Ukraine or another country) has to be legally married. They also have to be between 15 and 45 years older than the child. Same-sex couples or alcohol or drug addicts cannot adopt. The decision about adoption is made by a court of law, which also considers the prospective parents’ state of health, motives for adoption, and the child’s rapport with the parents-to-be. Besides, any kind of commercial mediation in the sphere of child adoption is banned in this country.
Ukraine gives higher priority to national adoption. According to the data provided by the Ministry for Family, Youth, and Sport, today Ukrainians adopt 1.5 times more children than do non-nationals (in comparison with 2004–05). This may be the result of the last year’s action aimed at promoting national adoption. Still, a considerable percentage of children are adopted by families from abroad, and Ukraine has an official status of a donor state (this term is applied to states which allow the adoption of children by aliens).
According to Viktor Korzh, who was Ukraine’s Minister for Family, Youth, and Sport in 2007, this was the first year in the history of independent Ukraine when more children were adopted by Ukrainians than by foreign nationals.
Out of several thousands of orphans and children deprived of parental care, a little over 1,000 are adopted by Ukrainians each year. Approximately the same number of Ukrainian children are adopted by foreign nationals. In 2008, these figures reached over 2,000 and 1,500, respectively. A considerable proportion of children who are available for foreign adoption have some health problems, because certain diagnoses are reasons for giving children maximum opportunities for adoption. Only Ukrainian citizens can adopt healthy children within a year after they are granted the status of an orphan or a child deprived of parental care.
The practices of 1990s, when getting a child out of the country was as easy as falling off a log, force one to look at such optimistic statistics rather skeptically, and for good reason. Precisely who adopts Ukrainian children? How do children adopted by foreign parents fare? Under Ukrainian legislation, a specially appointed board of guardians monitors the situation with children adopted and residing in Ukraine. But what about the others?
Since the year 2000, nearly 19,000 Ukrainian children have been adopted by foreign nationals. Is there anyone to keep tabs on them? Foreign adoptive parents are by no means obliged to report to the Ukrainian government agencies responsible for the adopted children’s welfare. Their sole duty is to write and submit a yearly report on the children’s well-being.
The scandalous case of the American subject Kruger, who adopted three brothers from Kherson to satisfy his sexual whims, has not, in all appearances, become a weighty argument for taking more rigorous action to protect Ukrainian orphans. Kruger used to send in reports on the adopted boys’ welfare with exemplary regularity.
Ukraine has not yet joined the Hague Convention of 1993 on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. This international treaty is an important stage in the establishment of guarantees for orphans and children deprived of parental care in cases of intercountry adoption. Meanwhile, Italy, the USA, Israel, Spain, Germany, and Canada, whose citizens adopt Ukrainian children most often, have already ratified this convention.
