Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / July 2008

http://www.thanhniennews.com/politics/?catid=1&newsid=40637

Lawmakers back bid to join Hague adoption convention
International adoption responsibilities would be fielded by a single
government agency if Vietnam joins the convention.

A majority of National Assembly’s Standing Committee members supported
a bid to sign the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption Friday,
scheduling a vote on the measure by the year’s end.
The International Adopted Children Bureau, under the Minister of
Justice, would be solely responsible for approving international
adoption applications if Vietnam becomes a signatory on the
convention, said Deputy Minister Hoang The Lien on the sidelines of
the committee session.

Currently, each provincial government ratifies its own international
adoption applications.

ADOPTION FIGURES Of 378 orphanages nationwide, 85 centers have been
licensed to process international adoption applications. Around 2,000
Vietnamese children are adopted into international families each year.
Financial aid to orphanages would also be handled by the central
government agency if Vietnam joins the convention, said Lien.

The move would aim to ward off unhealthy competition between
international adoption agencies and even among Vietnamese orphanages,
he added.

Lien said lawmakers would also work to remedy shortcomings in local
adoption regulations, which many people had capitalized on to forge
adoption applications.

Under Vietnamese law, a child must be abandoned by their parents or
orphaned to be adopted.

Vietnamese parents who send their children to orphanages due to
poverty do so only temporarily.

But several criminals have faked documents leading agencies and
adoptive parents to believe that such children were in fact abandoned.

Lien said a recent case of adoption paperwork fraud in the northern
province of Nam Dinh would be a major deterrent.

Nam Dinh Province police arrested the head of a charity organization
in Truc Ninh District on Thursday for allegedly forging adoption
documents.

Nam Dinh authorities began investigating two local charity
organizations for their alleged involvement in dubious adoption
paperwork in mid-July.

Prior to Thursday, Nam Dinh police had arrested three people,
including two communal health officials, for allegedly faking papers
documenting the origins of babies they claimed to have found.

Lien also said authorities would discuss other mismatches between
Vietnamese laws and the Hague Convention.

For example, under Vietnamese law, the maximum age for adoptees is 16,
while the Hague Convention extends the adoption age to 18.

Additionally, the Hague Convention stipulates that adopted children
must jettison their legal ties with their parents while Vietnamese
laws still allow adopted children to retain inheritance and other
rights from their birth parents.

Lien said Vietnam and the US may still cooperate to arrange adoptions
in the future through a new agreement or the Hague Adoption
Convention.

In April, the Ministry of Justice dispelled accusations in an official
US report of systematic baby-selling in Vietnam, saying it was
“totally untrue.”