Ireland suspends Guatemalan adoptions

The Adoption Authority of Ireland has this week suspended applications to adopt children from Guatemala.

Interestingly Ireland itself has signed but not yet ratified the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption practices which the Guatemalan government has only just signed-up to itself. About 75 children from Guatemala have been adopted by Irish parents within the last five years and Ireland has a comparatively high rate of foreign adoptions (Around 500 a year compared to around 250 here in the UK.)

Someone purporting to represent Casa Quivira left an interesting plea for help the other day as a comment on one of my earlier posts: "The police are not allowing our babies to have needed supplies without a court order. They need formula and the police are only giving them whole milk, which is not adequate for children under 12 mnths. The Dr has not been able to visit since Sat and some of these babies need constant care. We feel our hands are tied and just want everyone to know everything is false reported in the initial media reports."

This situation was subsequently reported by the BBC on Friday

Of course we sympathise with the plight of these kids. However, V spoke to a journalist called Le Clerc on site the other morning and he reported that he had ventured into the suspect adoption home and had spotted a frankly surprising amount of very expensive equipment inside, including rows of incubators (Matrix-style!).

Whether or not this operation is technically legal under current Guatemalan law, there seems to be substantial investment behind it, which leads me to suspect that it represents a violation of the spirit of the Hague Convention which requires that inter-country adoptions may take place only where it is in the best interests of the child and where no profit is made.

Earlier in the week adoptive parent Katherine from Michigan told the BBC that "one of the reasons we picked Guatemala specifically is that the country has no social welfare system, there are no public orphanages, there is no other place for these babies to go." I wonder where she picked up that particular bit of misinformation? We have seen how the good folk behind Casa Quivira are pushing the ludicrous statistic that 1 in 3 Guatemalan kids die in early infancy. Katherine and her like should remind themselves that most of these 'orphans' for sale have parents.