In order to “earn” adoptable infants, adoption agencies and prospective adopters make donations to orphanages. The more money donated, the larger the number of infants an agency is entitled to. Orphanages don’t necessarily have a shortage of children in their care, but many don’t have a large supply of adoptable infants. When orphanages receive more donations than they have adoptable infant stock, they need to procure infants to fulfill their obligation.
The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption. The Hague convention was introduced in the 1990’s to curb the illegal practices in inter-country adoption, but is a woefully naive treaty. It states that no profits are allowed to be made and only reasonable fees can be asked for services performed and all adoptions should be performed under control of Central Authorities.
The Hague Convention is designed around the experiences drawn from old school baby brokering in Latin America. To steer away from this attorneys centered style of baby brokering, the Hague Convention promotes a system of accredited adoption agencies monitored by Central Authorities. What the Hague Convention failed to notice is that adoption agencies are perfect fund-raising vehicles. Not only are their paying customers willing to pay large amounts of money in orphanage donations, they also receive large amounts of money through regular fund raising activities. Nearly all internationally operating adoption agencies have affiliated foundations, some sitting on tens of millions of dollars/
I worked on the Hague negotiations regarding records access. It was a nightmare to even get the industry to hold the status quo on what records we can get. Don’t even get me started tonight on the convention itself and the out-source regs that gutted any good that may have been intended and turned IA files over to Homeland Security to muck with. I can tell you safely that the convention was never meant to work, at least not in the beneficent pretty-baybee way it was flogged to the public and politicians. It was always about big adoption companies maintaining control and dictating terms to anyone left over. It’s always been about covering industry ass and filling its wallet.
