by Razvan Amariei
\n3 May 2004<\/p>\n
A proposed new law to limit international adoptions will give the European
\nUnion exactly what it wants, and the United States precisely what it doesn’t.<\/p>\n
BUCHAREST, Romania–Five months ago, when the European Union threatened to
\nsuspend accession negotiations with Romania over the country’s breach of an
\nEU-imposed moratorium on international adoptions, Romanian political leaders
\nshifted into major damage-control gear. With appeasement and promises, the
\ncountry managed to avert punishment for allowing more than 100 Romanian
\nchildren to be adopted abroad in 2003.<\/p>\n
Now, on the verge of codifying the moratorium into law, the country finds
\nitself under pressure from the United States not to do so.<\/p>\n
On 15 April, the Romanian Senate approved legislation that would only allow
\nRomanian children to be adopted abroad after every option for keeping them in
\nRomania had been exhausted, and then only by a „close relative.“<\/p>\n
The bill is awaiting a vote in the Chamber of Deputies, and if successful, it
\nwill close thousands of pending international adoptions that were begun before
\nthe moratorium took effect in June 2001. Most of the open cases involve
\nAmericans trying to adopt Romanian children, and not surprisingly, some
\npowerful allies have emerged since the Senate vote to argue their case.<\/p>\n
AMERICAN BIG GUNS<\/strong><\/p>\n In an opinion piece called, „Let Your Children Go,“ published by the He continued, „For the children who remain in Romania’s child-care institutions Romanian officials‘ reply was swift: Gabriela Coman, president of the Romanian With a bit more diplomacy, Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana offered a But the U.S. full-court press had only just begun: A few days after Armitage’s Meanwhile, the head of the Romanian Prime Minister’s Chancellor’s Office, Alin WASHINGTON VS. BRUSSLES<\/strong><\/p>\n Enter Jonathan Scheele, chief of the European Commission’s delegation in Most observers say U.S. pressure won’t succeed in significantly changing the Moreover, this is an election year (local elections are scheduled for June). That’s a dramatic change from the pre-1989 era, when sending one’s child to be The children’s‘ plight was widely publicized by the Western media–television By the end of the decade, with significant sums of money changing hands between It’s still possible to find Romanians who believe a child’s best hope lies with As of this writing, the Chamber of Deputies had not scheduled a vote on the by Razvan Amariei 3 May 2004 A proposed new law to limit international adoptions will give the European Union exactly what it wants, and the United States precisely what it doesn’t. BUCHAREST, Romania–Five months ago, when the European Union threatened to suspend accession negotiations with Romania over the country’s breach of an EU-imposed moratorium on… Weiter »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7035,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7033\/revisions\/7035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nInternational Herald Tribune on 24 April, no less than U.S. Deputy Secretary of
\nState Richard Armitage told of his own experience as an adoptive parent and
\nwrote, „If approved by the Chamber of Deputies and enacted into law, this
\ndecision will deprive Romania’s abandoned children of the better lives they
\ndeserve.“<\/p>\n
\ntoday, and for those who will be placed there tomorrow, the Romanian
\ngovernment’s new draft law would be a tragedy. For their sake, the law should
\nbe changed, and inter-country adoptions, with all appropriate protections,
\npermitted again.“<\/p>\n
\nNational Authority for Child Protection and Adoptions, defended the bill and
\ntold the press that Romania „no longer wants to be among the countries that
\n‚donate‘ children, like Russia, Ukraine, and China.“<\/p>\n
\nneutral characterization of Armitage’s piece by calling it „a sign of
\nfriendship for our country, and in the interest for Romanian children.“
\nAlthough Romania was open to discussing a „more relaxed“ version of the law, he
\nadded, it was essential to balance the desires of the United States with those
\nof the EU.<\/p>\n
\narticle ran in the IHT, two dozen members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to
\nRomanian officials asking for the draft bill to be rewritten. Then the U.S.
\nambassador in Bucharest, Michael Guest, issued a statement that said, „We all
\nwant Romania’s adoption system to be clean of corruption. But this doesn’t mean
\nthat thousands of children should spend their childhood in state-run
\ninstitutions only because there are no families in Romania to adopt them.“<\/p>\n
\nTeodorescu, was summoned to Washington to discuss–what else?–his country’s
\nadoption policy.<\/p>\n
\nBucharest. After a hastily arranged meeting with Geoana, Scheele told a
\nreporter from the BBC that „what really matters is these children’s interest
\nand not that of some foreign citizens.“ Shortly thereafter, Romanian officials
\nannounced that a group of independent experts would study and report on the
\neffect of the proposed new adoption regulations.<\/p>\n
\nlanguage in the draft law. With NATO membership, Romania has what it wanted
\nmost from the United States, they say. The EU is a different matter. The
\ncountry has a long way to go to satisfy European officials ahead of its
\nanticipated membership, in 2007, which is why many people feel the odds are in
\nBrussels‘ favor on the adoption issue.<\/p>\n
\nAlthough the nationalistic Greater Romania Party opposes international
\nadoptions, most political parties in Romania–including the governing Social
\nDemocratic Party (PSD)–have not taken a position on the issue and are not
\nlikely to now, since public opinion favors keeping the children in the country.<\/p>\n
\nraised in state-run institutions was not unusual among Romanians too poor to
\ncope with another mouth to feed. And there were a lot of mouths to feed, since
\nin his zeal to increase the population, Ceausescu had banned all forms of
\ncontraception and outlawed abortion. By 1989, Romania’s rapid birth rate and
\ndeep poverty had sent 100,000 children (most of them abandoned) to orphanages
\nto live in conditions that visitors said reminded them of Nazi-era
\nconcentration camps.<\/p>\n
\nimages of emaciated toddlers lashed to steel-railed cribs triggered an adoption
\nfrenzy abroad, and during the 1990s, tens of thousands of Romanian children
\nwent to new homes in Western Europe and North America. Foreigners who wanted to
\nadopt Romanian children were viewed as merciful saviors. (It’s a memory
\nArmitage evoked in his IHT column: „When communism collapsed in Europe in
\n1989,“ he wrote, „many Americans also opened up their homes, providing these
\nchildren with loving families and, indeed, with the bright futures they
\ndeserve.“<\/p>\n
\nlawyers, judges, government clerks, hopeful parents, NGOs, and travel agencies,
\nadoption had become a business: The seller was Romania, the product was
\nchildren, and the buyer was the West. For a country with EU aspirations,
\nhowever, it was a liability. In 2001, when the EU made it clear that it wanted
\nRomania to put a halt to all international adoptions, a moratorium was adopted
\n(though ultimately flouted).<\/p>\n
\na family abroad, but the majority of Romanians have undergone a reversal in
\nopinion, fueled in part by media stories of children being mistreated by their
\nnew parents and by sensational, but never proven, anecdotes of orphans sold
\ninto organ-trafficking networks. Nationalistic fears have played a part, too,
\nin the form of worry that adoptions weaken the country because Romanian
\nchildren are „turned into“ Americans, Germans, or Italians–whatever the
\nnationality of their adoptive parents.<\/p>\n
\ndraft bill, and a committee was still studying the legislation’s potential
\neffects. U.S. officials continue to try to convince Romanian officials to
\nchange the language. Meanwhile, the fate of more than 40,000 abandoned and
\norphaned children still in Romania’s state-run institutions hangs in the
\nbalance.
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"