Here is another article fairly similar to the one I posted yesterday… it lacks the passion and strong wordings of Pool’s article. It expresses a lot of similar concerns (in a more constructive way in my opinion) and touches on several different aspects/concerns.

And while these articles focus on African children and adoption, you could very easily substitute Chinese children, or South American children or children from any other transracial international adoption and the issues would be the same.

The dilemma of adopting an African child
The Associated Press

Published: October 11, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/11/africa/AF_GEN_Adopting_from_Africa.php

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa By 2010, the U.N. estimates, 18 million African
children will have lost a parent to AIDS. Already there are more than 43
million orphans on the world's poorest continent.

Most of those millions who have lost parents to AIDS or other causes are
cared for by relatives or orphanages or find themselves living on the
streets. Reports U.S. pop star Madonna wants to adopt a Malawian child have
focused attention on foreign adoptions - and raised questions about whether
it's in an African child's best interest to be spirited away to the wealthy
West.

"Are celebrities doing it for the right reasons and not to make a
statement?" asked Pam Wilson of the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society.

The adoption of children from poorer nations - Cambodia, Ethiopia, Romania -
by rich foreigners has been happening for decades. Angelina Jolie first
adopted Maddox from Cambodia and then Zahara from Ethiopia. Mia Farrow, now
the mother of 14, began adopting children from poor countries in 1973 with
an orphan from the Vietnam War.

Wilson said there would always be a "demand" for children from developing
countries.

"There is a shortage of healthy babies in the First World, particularly now
when there is no longer such a stigma to being a single parent and there are
few babies in the system," she said.

However, international adoptions are not "an easy option," said Jackie
Schoeman, executive director of Cotlands, a South African organization that
cares for children affected by HIV.

In Africa, orphans usually are absorbed into extended families, but AIDS has
affected many of the people who might have traditionally provided support.

"For us, first prize is to place the kids locally or even regionally,"
Schoeman said. "If the only other option is for them to be in a long-term
institutional then we would consider international adoption."

A 1993 Hague Convention governs inter-country adoptions to protect children
and prevent trafficking. Not many countries have the agreements the
conventions require to allow such adoptions.

South Africa, for example, is a signatory to the convention but does not
have an agreement with the United States, United Kingdom or Australia. South
African children can only be adopted by parents from a few European
countries such as Finland, Belgium and Botswana.

Immigrations laws of certain countries also make it difficult to adopt
HIV-positive children.

Malawi signed the Hague agreement but current legislation does not allow for
inter-country adoptions. This would make it illegal for Madonna to take home
a child from Malawi, although there are rumors that restrictions were to be
waived for her.

Numbers of adoptions for Malawi are not available. South African government
statistics show a decline with 1,500 national or local adoptions in the last
year and only 155 inter-country adoptions.

Schoeman said there were advantages to international adoptions. Recently one
of the children for whom her organization cares was adopted by parents in
the U.S. and now can receive medical care unavailable in South Africa.

However, Schoeman and others are concerned about the long-term effects of
such a big move on a child, particularly in the development of cultural and
individual identities.

"We don't really know enough about what a black child growing up in Finland
is going to feel. I don't think it would be an alien culture because they
would have grown up exposed to it. But will they have felt better staying at
home?" she asked.

At the heart of the matter is the motivation of people wanting to adopt
orphans from troubled countries, especially HIV-positive children.

"Sometimes the response is emotional. They just want to help without
understanding the long-term implications," Schoeman said.

There are about 230,000 children living with HIV in South Africa, which has
an estimated 5.5 million people infected with the virus, a number second
only to India. Only about 1 percent of all adoptions are of HIV-positive
children, Schoeman said.

AIDS and child rights activists worry about creating further stigmas around
the disease by drawing attention to children orphaned by AIDS.

"If it is known that a death has been caused by HIV there can be profound
stigmatization. The children are often ostracized and if the mother is still
alive the husband's family could grab the land and push the widow out. They
will think the family has been cursed," said Bill Philbrick, manager of the
Hope for African Children Initiative (HACI), based in Atlanta, Georgia.

His organization is a pan-African effort established in 2000 as a
partnership between organizations such as CARE, Save the Children UK and
World Vision to provide support to orphans and vulnerable children.

Recent years has seen a shift away from programs designed for AIDS orphans
to vulnerable children in general.

This avoids creating what Philbrick ironically refers to as "lucky orphans"
- children who are singled out for particular services or adoption.

"Even if the intention is good it can still create a stigma that is
associated with the disease," he said. "You have to show the same compassion
and care to all orphaned children."

Philbrick said there is increasing desire among communities to keep
vulnerable or orphaned children within them. To make it easier,
grandparents, extended families or care givers need help to access AIDS
treatments and other medical and health care as well as education and food
security.

"International adoptions are not a solution. The answer is supporting the
community," he said.

Which is what Eye of the Child, a child rights group in Malawi, has called
on Madonna to do. In an open letter to "Madam Madonna" the organization
urges her to help fund existing programs in Malawi to help vulnerable
children. The group also applauded efforts by her charity Raising Malawi,
which aims to set up an orphan care center.

It proposed a fund that would "support extended family systems, offer
education and financial support for secondary school going orphans, improve
community participation and other community-based approaches to care for
orphans. We believe that this type of efforts do not create and develop a
dependency syndrome."

In response to this article, I will say again that if ANY adoption rules and regulations have been waived, bent or changed for Madonna, then that is wrong. It is wrong because integrity in adoptions is something that must be upheld no matter what, and this sends the message that if you have enough money, you can bypass integrity and the processes that are in place to protect children.

I completely agree that Madonna, Angelina Jolie, other celebrities and all adoptive parents in general should help support programs that help keep children in their birth countries and aid children in need.

I strongly encourage all adoptive families to find a way to provide continuous help to the country your child was born in. I also strongly encourage all adoption agencies to not only develop the in-demand adoption programs, but to create programs to give back to the communities these children are coming from and provide help and support to the children left behind.

One of my favorite things about our agency is that they have several programs in place to help the children of Ethiopia. They have programs to help pay for schooling for Ethiopian children, to help pay for medications and keep HIV+ children in their families and other sponsorship programs that truly make a difference in the lives of children in Ethiopia. Adoptive parents and others can participate in these programs or any one of many others that are out there for small monthly costs. We sponsor a child for $30 a month…$30…that is less than one trip to Burger King for us.

So, the “lesson learned” from this article for me is that as is repeatedly pointed out to adoptive parents, international adoption is not the answer or the solution to the overwhelming number of orphans in Africa or China or any other part of the world. To imply such would be like trying to fix a leak in a dam with a Band-aid.

Adoption is not the answer when you look at the big picture or the big problems, but I do believe it is the answer for some individual children.

When a country allows us to adopt their children, their most precious resource, we owe it to them to not just accept our child and turn our backs and walk away. Now obviously most of us don’t have three million laying around to go and build an orphanage, but there is always something that can be done. Families can sponsor a child, sponsor a family, hold a fundraiser for a worthy organization, gather medical supplies, school supplies, clothes or other needed items…there are countless ways we can be a part of the solution.

While we are blessing our families with these beautiful children, we are building ties between our families and other countries, cultures and people, and with that comes a level of responsibility to care, and to find a way to try and help.