UNICEF's Attempts to Prevent Orphans from Joining Forever Familes

UNICEF's position on intercountry adoption is one that places unrealistic ideals over pragmatic problem solving. Their position infringes on women's civil rights and endangers the very children they claim to protect. Currently, UNICEF is involved in an all out war against intercountry adoption from Guatemala and has resorted to propaganda, lies and manipulation of the truth in its attempts to remove thousands of children's only realistic chance to grow up in a loving, stable, and secure environment.

Each year, almost 3,000 Guatemalan children join their forever families in the United States through legal Inter-Country Adoption (ICA). For the last ten years, however, that legal system has been under continuous attack. At the core of the attack on legal adoptions from Guatemala has been UNICEF.

UNICEF and many of its affiliated organizations have launched an all out war to try to force the Guatemalan government to pass reactionary, extremely restrictive legislation that would essentially end ICA from Guatemala and deny these children of their only opportunity to find forever families. Essentially, they follow a throw the baby out with the bathwater" philosophy and characterize legal ICA as the exporting" of children. In addition to jeopardizing the children, UNICEFs positions are detrimental to womens Civil Rights, violate the Constitution and Peace Accords of Guatemala, and ignore the socio-economic and cultural realities of the country.

In the process of this battle, a grassroots movement has formed to defend the rights of these children. Thus far it has taken the form of petitions (over 6,000 signatures collected), letter writing campaigns, e-mail campaigns, websites, and congressional lobbying. In the Bay Area alone, organizers have met with the offices of Senators Boxer and Feinstein as well as Representatives Pelosi, Eshoo, Honda, Miller, Lantos, and Lofgren.

Past stories appearing in the media have printed stories that are factual inaccurate and not plausible within the current legal adoption system, have used sensationalized language, and have created an environment where children adopted from Guatemala and their parents have been harassed by people believing the child may have been kidnapped, involuntarily relinquished, or bought like a commodity. Information to this effect is available on request.

What UNICEF Wants:
·   Jeopardize Womans Civil Rights: UNICEF wishes to remove a woman's right to choose to place her child up for adoption by mandating official searches for and sign-offs from family members. More often than not, women wish to keep their pregnancy and adoption private from family. In other countries, UNICEFs influence over legislation has resulted in increased numbers of infanticide and abandonment. In addition, Guatemala has huge problems with sexual crimes against women (approx. 10% of all reported crimes). Under UNICEF's plan, a woman that is sexually assaulted and impregnated by a family member (not uncommon) would not have the right to preclude the attacker from taking the child if she attempts to place it for adoption. She will also likely face scrutiny, abuse, harassment, and pseudo-exile from her village if the adoption is discovered (which is why many women move to the city while they complete the process).
·   Damage Child Care: UNICEF wishes to remove all aspects of the private adoption system and place it in the hands of the corrupt and incompetent Guatemalan government. The current private system provides excellent private foster and group care while adoptions are in process. UNICEF would prefer to end the foster care system altogether even though the UNICEF supported law currently before the Guatemalan congress makes NO provision for the more than 30,000 children already in privately funded orphanages that receive no government funding. UNICEF endorses the passage of this law pass, preventing adoptions but providing no funding for the children. They would undermine the currently privately funded child-care system, including licensed private homes, without any economic alternatives. Currently, the private homes rely on proceeds from adoptions to support many other unadoptable children.

·   Place Despots In Charge: UNICEF believed that the likes of Rios Montt, who slaughtered countless indigenous children (note: nearly all adopted children have indigenous bloodlines) during the civil war and was running for president, be entrusted to provide adequate care and a transparent, ethical system. UNICEF ignores the fact that the government currently takes an average of seven years to clear a ward of the state for adoption and offers no suggestion on how they would fund or provide care. And somehow UNICEF believes that centralizing adoptions in the government would reduce corruption in the process. Anyone with a minimal knowledge of the Guatemalan government realizes how ludicrous this is.

·   Waste Precious Time: UNICEF would mandate extended searches for a domestic family to place the child with before allowing them to be adopted internationally. UNICEF ignores the cultural and racial realities of Guatemala that result in virtually no domestic families interested in adopting. The high poverty rates in Guatemala mean that only a small percentage of the population in the middle and upper classes could even consider adoption and infertility rates are very low among these people. More importantly, a strict caste-like social structure, ethic prejudice against indigenous peoples, and an overall culture that does not accept non-bloodline adoptions make domestic adoption an unrealistic option. Imagine the United States in the 1950s and making an African-American childs only opportunity for a family contingent on finding a domestic Caucasian family willing to adopt. This is essentially UNICEFs plan and in other countries where UNICEF has been successful, this has resulted in children needlessly spending years in institutionalized care.
Guatemala Facts:
·   Highest infant mortality rate in all of the Americas (runs as high as 40% in many areas)
·   Highest fertility rate in all the Americas (4.5 children per woman overall, approximately twice that in rural areas)
·   Second only to Haiti in extreme poverty, an estimated 75% of the Guatemalan population lives in poverty.
·   Highest rates of malnutrition (60%) and child death (approx. 30,000/yr) from preventable disease
·   No social or health programs to support woman with caring for children
·   Extreme male domination that eliminates a woman's ability to control pregnancy but places no responsibilities on biological fathers
·   Contraception and abortion are illegal, unavailable, or priced beyond reach

In Conclusion:
UNICEF is doing its best to remove these childrens only chance for a decent life. They spread unsubstantiated propaganda about kidnappings, organ selling, and child trafficking in order to justify their reactionary position while ignoring facts such as that DNA tests are conducted to ensure that the woman relinquishing the child is the biological mother. In this process, they also ignore the socio-cultural, economic, and political realities of the country. They have already succeeded in Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, and other countries. In those countries, they now judge success only by showing an end to ICA without ever mentioning whether their intended goals were reached (increased domestic adoptions, family unification, etc.).

The efforts by UNICEF and other international organizations to impose first world standards and principles on third world countries have proven to fail the children they seek to protect". There is no proof that there are significant increased services or improved social welfare programs to justify this placing of right standards" before third world realities.

Press Contacts:
If you are interested in covering the story of UNICEF and how their actions deviate from their mission, a comprehensive packet of materials is available at your request. In addition, available for interviews are Hannah Wallace (President of Focus on Adoption, a non-profit organization created to promote honesty and integrity in all aspects of the adoption process) , adoptive parents, adoption professionals, and various grassroots organizers.