The Hand That Rocks the Broken Cradle
Alemayehu G. Mariam I February 22,
2010
When
I wrote Part I of “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”
nearly a year and eight months ago,
the heartbreaking and outrageous scandal in the broken
adoption system in Ethiopia was a shocking molestation
crime committed against two recently adopted Ethiopian
children -- one barely 2 and the other 4 years old -- by
their French parents. The father was jailed for rape and
violence, and the mother for failure to report a crime.
The attitude of the Ethiopian adoption officials
interviewed in that case was a nauseatingly indifferent,
“S_ _ t happens!”
I was so incensed and
dismayed by the responses of the adoption bureaucrats
that I wrote in Part I, “The
inattentive listener could easily mistake the interview
of these bureaucrats as a conversation with commodities
traders on the Chicago Board of Trade on a bad day than
officials involved in caring for the most vulnerable
children from one of the poorest countries in the world.”
Little did I know at the time how close I had come to
the truth: I was indeed listening to some
cold-blooded and pitiless bureaucrats from the Ethiopian
Adoption Board of Trade! In a videotaped
interview last week, an adopted child from Ethiopia said
she and her two sisters were “sold” into adoption after
Christian World Adoption (CWA) “paid” off their father.
The official position of the dictatorship in Ethiopia is
that most children adopted by foreigners are actually
orphans, or abandoned and parentless street waifs; and
but for the foreign adoptions, these children would
likely die from neglect or hardship. That is simply
not true. Many of the adopted children have parents
and families, some of whom are relatively well off by
local standards. The fact of the matter is that in
Ethiopia there is a cottage industry in child
trafficking under the cover of adoption. CBS News
chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian last
week charged that the adoption system in Ethiopia is so
corrupt and those who operate it so crooked that
“Ethiopia has turned into fertile ground for child
trafficking”.
In
the last year adoptions from Ethiopia to the U.S. have
skyrocketed
- growing faster than any other country in the world.
They have risen from 731 in 2006 to more than 2,200
last year. That's nearly six children per day.
Now a CBS News investigation has discovered that growth
has turned Ethiopia into fertile ground for child
trafficking - a country in which some American
agencies and their staff engage in highly questionable
conduct. Adoptive families allege that many children
brought to the U.S. are not even orphans, that
prospective parents are misled about a child's health
and background, that local families are recruited - and
sometimes even paid - to give up their kids.
The evidence
uncovered by Keteyian showed three sisters -- ages 4, 6
and 7-- were adopted by an American family on
representations by CWA that “their mother is dead, their
father dying of AIDS [and]a life of prostitution is all
but assured - if [they are] not adopted - saved - by a
loving American family.” Katie Bradshaw, the mother of
the three children told Keteyian, “Aside from the gender
of the children, everything else proved to be a complete
lie.” In fact, “the three sisters, Journee, Maree and
Meya - were actually much older: 13, 6 and 11. While
their mother was dead, their father was healthy and very
much alive. He was living, by local standards, a
middle-class life - an extended family able to take care
of the girls as middle sister Meya showed us first
hand.” The Bradshaw’s case is merely the tip of the
iceberg of adoption horror stories in Ethiopia.
CWA was quick to throw the Ethiopian regime, its
officials and judicial system right under a speeding
bus. In a statement on its website, CWA denied any
responsibility for factual misrepresentations and
saddled the regime with full responsibility:An
investigation is done by the children’s home, the
police, the Kebele (local elected officials), and the
Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MOLSA). The police
and the Kebele are responsible for investigating the
relinquishing parent’s claims… The determination as to
whether a child is adoptable can only be made by
a court through a formal, detailed legal process.
It is not a determination made by a humanitarian aid
organization, an adoption agency, or a child’s
community. It can only be made by the Ethiopian
judicial system.
CWA, a non-profit
agency established in 1991, “collected $6 million
dollars - charging a fee of about $15,000 per child in
2008,” the going rate in Ethiopia, according to the CBS
investigation. But the Bradshaws and their three
children have collected nothing but profound grief and
sorrow: “We have watched our kids grieve and cry and
scream and melt down from the bottom of their souls over
the loss of their country and their family,”
declared Katie Bradshaw in despair.
The CBS investigation is not the first to reveal child
trafficking in Ethiopia’s corrupt adoption system. In
September 2009, Mary Ann Jolley of the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (Aunty [ABC]) reported that the
adoption agencies do not go to orphanages to get
children for adoption but “harvest” them in the
countryside and commoditize them:
There was something
incredibly disturbing about seeing international
adoption en masse.
All these [Ethiopian] children about to leave their
country to begin a new life in a faraway place,
disconnected from their heritage and culture… Foreigners
prefer younger children - babies to five-year-olds.
Older children or those with health problems are more
difficult to pitch. So while many children languish
in underfunded and overcrowded orphanages, some
international adoption agencies are out spruiking
[marketing promotions] in villages asking families to
relinquish their children for adoption. It's a
phenomenon known as ‘harvesting’ and it's shocking to
see…There are more than 70 private international
adoption agencies operating in Ethiopia… Almost half the
agencies in Ethiopia are unregistered, some doing
whatever they can to find children to satisfy the
foreign market… No one disputes there is a real need
for international adoptions, but for the sake of the
children and adoptive parents there needs to be some
protection from unscrupulous agencies who purport to be
driven by humanitarian interests,
but in reality are stuffing their pockets
with dirty cash.
Partly based on the ABC investigation, in November 2009,
the Australian Attorney General
“decided that the Ethiopia–Australia program should be
suspended because of concerns that Australia can no
longer conduct intercountry adoptions in Ethiopia in a
manner consistent with its obligations under the Hague
Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in
respect of Intercountry Adoption.” In a curiously
phrased statement, the Attorney General explained, “A
key reason for the suspension is a new requirement
of the Ethiopian Government that the [intercountry
adoption] program enter into a formal agreement
to provide community development assistance.” In
other words, an agreement for a child
trafficking-extortion racket in which development
assistance is exchanged for Ethiopian babies!!
The documented fact is
that there is a not-so-hidden cottage industry in
Ethiopia that trades and traffics in children under the
benign cover of charitable adoptions. The ruling
dictatorship has been aware of the problem for several
years but has failed to undertake a single investigation
of the allegations in the media and individual
complaints of adoptive parents, or identify and
prosecute those involved in child “harvesting”,
trafficking and sale. It is inexplicable why the matter
has failed to attract the slightest official attention:
Could it be a manifestation of the regime’s depraved and
criminal indifference to the human rights of these
children? Could it be because the regime does not
believe it has moral responsibility for the welfare of
these children? Or could it be that some powerful
individuals are involved in the “harvesting” and
commoditization of children?
The fact of the matter is that the
dictatorship in Ethiopia has a legally binding
duty under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
[Ethiopia adopted by accession on May 14, 1991] to
ensure the welfare of these children. Under Art. 21 (d)
of the CRC, the dictatorship has a mandatory legal
duty to “Take all appropriate measures to ensure
that, in inter-country adoption, the placement does
not result in improper financial gain for those involved
in it.” Under Article 11 (1), the regime is required
to “take measures to combat the illicit transfer
and non-return of children abroad.” (See also
Article 19 (1) (2).) Under Article 13 (2) of the
“Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of
Ethiopia”, the dictatorship has an obligatory duty to
carry out its international treaty obligations and
protect the rights of these children.
What must be done to save
Ethiopian children from “harvesting” and
commoditization?
Three things must be done
immediately. First, the rule of law must be upheld. The
dictatorship must live up to its mandatory and
obligatory duties under its constitution, international
treaties and its own criminal laws. The dictatorship has
at its disposal all of the legal tools necessary to
investigate and prosecute individuals and organizations
involved in or suspected of child trafficking. Article
597 (1) (2) of the dictatorship’s Penal Code imposes a
prison sentence of 5-20 years against anyone engaging in
“trafficking in women and children… by violence,
threat, deceit, fraud, kidnapping or by the giving of
money or other advantage to the person having
control over a woman or a child…” Severe criminal
liability also attaches to anyone who aids and abets
in trafficking in children and women.
There is substantial evidence of
criminal wrongdoing in the adoption process. Foreign
adoptive parents would be willing to come forward and
give evidence on the fraudulent practices used to sell
children to them in the name of adoption. There is also
evidence gathered by independent news agencies pointing
to criminal wrongdoing by those involved in the adoption
process. The dictatorship has a legal and moral duty to
immediately suspend all adoptions and launch an
investigation to determine the scope, severity and
magnitude of the child trafficking problem, take
appropriate measures to prosecute offenders and
establish rigorous procedures that will prevent any
future recurrences.
Second, action must be taken to deal
with the structural defects in the adoption system by
acceding (signing) to the Hague Convention on Protection
of Children and Co-Operation in respect of Intercountry
Adoption (entered into force 1995). Australia suspended
its intercountry adoption program in Ethiopia because it
concluded that the Ethiopian adoption system does not
conform to or is in violation of the Hague Convention.
The purpose of the Convention is “to establish
safeguards to ensure that intercountry adoptions take
place in the best interests of the child and with
respect for his or her fundamental rights as recognized
in international law” (Art. 1 (a)), and to “prevent the
abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children”
(Preamble). The Convention has been adopted by South
Africa, Kenya, Togo, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso,
Mauritius and Madagascar, among dozens of other
countries.
Third, the regime must also sign the
U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children,
supplementing the United Nations Convention against
Transnational Organized Crime (“Palermo Trafficking
Protocol”, entered into force, 2003). The Protocol,
among other things, requires signatories to criminalize
the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation,
facilitates return and acceptance of children who have
been victims of cross-border trafficking, and provides
for the confiscation of the instruments and proceeds
of trafficking and related offenses to be used for the
benefit of trafficked persons. Some 118 countries
have adopted the Protocol including Kenya, Uganda,
Djbouti, Niger, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Rwanda, Burundi,
The Congo, Sierra Leone and dozens of other countries.
If it is any comfort to Katie and
Calvin Bradshaw, they should know that it is not only
their three children who “grieve and cry and scream
and melt down from the bottom of their souls over the
loss of their country and their family.” There are
80 million others with them who also grieve and cry and
scream and melt down from the bottom of their souls over
the loss of their country…
SAVE ETHIOPIA’S FUTURE!
STOP “HARVESTING” OF ETHIOPIAN CHILDREN!
Alemayehu G.
Mariam, is a professor of political science at
California State University, San Bernardino, and an
attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog
on The Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/
and his commentaries appear regularly on pambazuka.org,
allafrica.com, newamericamedia.org and other sites.
