Internationaladoptionlhhszambia09

Lauren Engstrom Period 3

(country profile in anti-semitism section)

 II. Background: International Adoption or inter-country adoption is a type of adoption in which an individual or couple becomes the legal and permanent guardians of a child born in another country. The laws and regulations for international adoption vary from country to country. Some countries like China and Korea have well-established rules and procedures for international adoptions, while other countries directly forbid it. Some qualities that are required in adoption are a high school education or a GED, make a minimum salary of $25,000, have life insurance, and have a stable living environment. An applicant for adoption must also be in good mental, emotional, and physical health with no serious illnesses of a life-threatening nature. In Korea and China they have standards for the weight of the potential guardian. In Korea you cant be more than 30% overweight and in China you cant have a body mass index less than 40. III. UN Involvement: The UN does not have much influence in the topic of International Adoption because each country has their own policy and right to sovernty, but UNICEF still professes their beliefs by creating conventions and committees to further show their ideals to multiple countries. The “Convention on Protection of Children” and “Cooperation in Respect of Inter-country Adoption(Convention)” was developed at the Hague Conference on Private International Law in May 1993. This Convention established standards to curb abuses in international adoption practice by: requiring a central point of contact or ‘Central Authority” in each country to coordinate inter-country adoption policy and practice. UNICEF believes that all decisions relating to children, including adoptions, should be made with the best interests of the child as the primary consideration. UNICEF supports the Hague Convention because it promotes “ethical and transparent” processes. “The Convention on the Rights of the Child” guides UNICEF’s processes. It states that the child has the first right to be raised by their own parent. But for children who cannot be raised by their families, an appropriate alternative family environment should be sought out before institutional care. All of these conventions are supported by UNICEF, UNHCR, the International Confederation of the Red Cross, and international NGOs, such as the Save the Children Alliance. IV. Country Policy/Possible Solutions: Zambia and the entire African Block have had bad experiences with international adoptions. We believe that children should be able to have a safe healthy childhood and some times adoption is necessary for that. Even though we have a strict policy on adoptions, child trafficking, child prostitution, and child abandonment for money are prominent during adoption. For our country -at this moment, adoptions on an inter-continental stand point would not be prominent or possible for some children’s safety. These situations do not **//always//** occur, but when even one child could possibly be in danger of it, we can not risk it for anyone else. Zambia believes that laws and set codes for potential guardians should be made more strict, and that the new ‘parents’ should be looked into and had multiple background checks before they are allowed absolute custody of the child. We encourage other countries to follow in our footsteps and look into improving their guidelines for adoption. With all countries help we can help to improve the adoption process and make it safer for our children. The children of the world are our future and making that future a bright and happy one is a necessarily and goal that we need to take on. Going and banning together as a joined front with all the countries will improve our chances at working out the kinks of international adoption.