UNICEF's callous opposition to international adoption





Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - Red Thread: An Adoptive Family Forum by Andrea Poe

An American is thwarted by UNICEF as she attempts to bring her developmentally challenged daughter home.  UNICEF’s response to a desperate grandmother, looking for help in bringing her grandchild Krystina home, confirms what many have long believed -- that UNICEF does not support inter-country adoption.

This summer Eileen Bates, Krystina’s grandmother, a waitress who lives in Reading, Pennsylvania, wrote to UNICEF for help in getting her granddaughter home.  The response she received is nothing less than extraordinary in its cold, detached heartlessness.  The email exchange between Krystina’s grandmother and UNICEF follows:

 

Contact Us
To: webmaster
Date: Jul 16, 2011 10:35:33 AM

I can not believe you think that leaving children in orphanages is in
the best interest of the child. I am a waiting grandmother of a child in
Krygs.  I know she will have a better life here then in an institution.
She would be loved. Fed and have medical care. We have been waiting for
her for over 3 years now and that just seems fair for who?

From: webmaster <webmaster@unicefusa.org>
Sent: Mon, July 18, 2011 10:22:08 AM
Subject: orphanages

Thank you for responding. Our concern is not to keep children in
orphanages but to help keep the children in their home countries. UNICEF
supports inter-country adoption as a last resort.

Thank you for your concern.

Terry Talley
Customer Relations

To: webmaster <webmaster@unicefusa.org>

Sent: Mon, July 18, 2011 5:17:47 PM
Subject: Re: orphanages

That's fine what you say, but their own country people are too poor to help a child who needs extra medical care.  My hopefully granddaughter has cerebral palsy and she should have had help long ago.   She is going to be 5 and has had no help. She will always remember where she came from and will learn about her homeland. My daughter still corresponds with many from that country and they are good friends.  You need to think of the single child and not  as a whole group. Each child is special and deserves to have parents who love them.  It will not happen for her if she is left there she will be come a homeless person at the age 18.

“I actually felt sick to my stomach when my mom received the cookie cutter remark from UNICEF,” says Ann Bates, Krystina’s mother, who is a pediatric intensive care nurse from Reading.

Bates began her journey as an adoptive mother six years ago after attending a seminar on international adoption at her workplace.  “After much searching and soul searching I was drawn to Rainbowkids website where waiting children with medical needs are listed to try and match them with families,” she notes.

There, she discovered a short paragraph about a 16-month-old girl name Krystina, who was diagnosed with a moderate developmental delay.



Nikolas with Grandmother



As with many programs over the past few years, the processing of international adoption in Kyrgyzstan slowed.  While waiting, Bates found information on a little boy in a Russian orphanage who needed a family.  In April 2010, she landed in Moscow.  “Nikolas joined our family and became a U.S. citizen on June 29, 2010,” she says.

When Nikolas first came home, he was developmentally delayed.  He did not talk. His gait was unsteady. He is now two-and-a-half and is all signs of developmental issues have been erased.  He runs.  He jumps.  He climbs.

“Most importantly, he knows he has a family that loves him.  He is rocked to sleep every night. He wakes up to the love of his family everyday,” she relates. “Sadly, he is a reminder every day of what Krystina and the other Kyrgyzstan waiting children are missing while stick in horrible political adoption delays are experiencing.”

Bates and many other pipeline families from around the country believe that UNICEF is behind the closing of international adoption programs around the world.

According to Bates, in January 2009 UNICEF took Kyrgyz government officials to a resort in Isyk Kul for a round table on inter-country adoptions.  Amid accusations of corruption within the adoption system, UNICEF recommended Kyrgyzstan shut down its international adoption program until it could revamp its laws or join The Hague.  

At that retreat, Bates maintains, UNICEF recommended that the pipeline cases like hers be allowed to go forward and be finalized. Then, several days later, without explanation, UNICEF reversed course.  Kyrgyzstan announced it was implementing a moratorium on all cases, including those with previously matched children and families like Krystina and Ann Bates.

“We believe UNICEF holds a large role in why we have not finalized our cases.  Both The Hague and the United Nations Treaty state that children should not be held in institutions when a suitable match has been identified,” Bates says. “We would like nothing more then for UNICEF to be presented with their own document that states they ‘recommended a moratorium but recommended pipeline cases be finalized’ and ask them to help make good on their recommendations.” 



For now, children like Krystina are trapped in a suspended system, living in sub-par conditions in deteriorating orphanages. 

“Without a doubt, UNICEF has the power and resources to make a positive difference in these cases. Instead, it has chosen to do absolutely nothing to help these children be united with their families.  UNICEF's failure to advocate would be baffling, except that it is sadly their standard operating procedure all the world over when it comes to international adoption,” maintains Kelly Ensslin, an attorney with Smith Moore Leatherwood in Raleigh, North Carolina, who represents Bates.  “The majority of these children were referred as healthy infants to families that expected to be able to bring them home in short order.  As the years have passed, these children have grown into special needs preschoolers living in underfunded institutions with too few resources to meet their most basic needs.”

To date neither Eileen nor Ann Bates has received further communication from UNICEF. 

And Krystina remains institutionalized in Kyrgyzstan.

Colo. couples await breakthrough on adoptions from Kyrgyzstan

Pam and Matt Bean keep a door shut on a room filled with baby clothes, baby shower gifts and a crib. It has been sitting unused in their Delta home since the winter of 2008, when they prepared it for the arrival of an adopted infant daughter.

That daughter, Takhmina, is now 3½, and the Delta couple continues to wait while two governments fail to come to terms on a process for adoptions. Instability in the government of Kyrgyzstan and a lack of action on the part of the U.S. State Department have held up adoptions for years, affecting the Beans as well as two other couples in Colorado and 62 around the country.

Their plight has received a hopeful jolt of attention with a letter from U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bennet urges her to speed up negotiations with Kyrgyzstan to end the limbo that has forced children to grow up in orphanages while their prospective parents wait.

"We have been riding this roller coaster for so long. I think now we have a guarded hope," Pam Bean said.

Bennet's letter to Clinton stated that two orphans have died in Kyrgyz institutions while adoptions have been delayed. Other orphans have been suffering from a lack of funding and overcrowding.

He urged Clinton to send an emergency delegation to the Central Asian country that has been mired in civil unrest, assassinations and ethnic clashes.

The adoption process went off track in the fall of 2008 when the Kyrgyz government halted adoptions in response to allegations of corruption and illegal processing. Two Kyrgyz adoption coordinators were arrested.

New adoption regulations were passed in the Kyrgyzstan Parliament and signed into law in May, but the law came with a three-month delay before it would go into effect. The new law also did not address the issue of the pending adoptions.

The matter has taken on new urgency because an election is set for October in Kyrgyzstan. There is a chance the current government could be ousted and the new adoption process derailed.

The State Department issued an alert in early June saying the department is "reaching out" to the Kyrgyzstan government to move ahead with the adoptions "but at this time it is not possible for new intercountry adoption cases to move forward."

"What we don't have now is urgency on the part of the State Department," said Kelly Ensslin, an attorney representing 33 of the families with delayed adoptions.

While they wait, the Beans send vitamins and birthday presents to Takhmina. They have occasionally been able to communicate with her on Skype satellite calls.

In Longmont, Brian and Shelley Nelson and their two children wait for their "son" and "brother" Nikolai, who was scheduled to come to them when he was 10 months old. He turned 4 in May.
They have no plans to give up on Nikolai.

"It would be really hard to walk away from a child we've been connected to for so long," Shelley Nelson said.

Steve and Teresa Affleck of Fort Collins say the same about Jasmine, the orphan they were matched with and met when she was 9 months old. They left a pink blanket with her and a promise to come back to bring her home soon. She is 3 now.

Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com

Read more: Colo. couples await breakthrough on adoptions from Kyrgyzstan - The Denver Post