Voices for Vietnam Adoption Integrity

The Department of State has issued their statement regarding the passing September 1st expiration of the bilateral adoption agreement this week.  It says, in part:

The Vietnamese Department of International Adoptions (DIA) has confirmed that the DIA continued to issue referrals to prospective adoptive parents until September 1, 2008, the date the United States – Vietnam bilateral adoption agreement expired. According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice, prospective adoptive parents who received a formal referral by September 1 will be allowed to process their adoption to conclusion. Dossiers that were not referred by September 1 will be closed and returned to the adoption service provider.

According to the DIA, a referral occurs when DIA sends a letter to prospective adoptive parents informing them that both DIA and provincial authorities have agreed to the match of a specific child. Any case where this letter has been sent to the prospective adoptive parents before September 1 will be considered as having a referral and will be processed to completion.

The DIA has informed the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi that they will supply the U.S. Embassy with a list of all cases that have received a referral. The Embassy expects to receive this list during the third week of September. The Embassy will confirm when this information is available to all U.S. adoption service providers and issue a public announcement providing a general summary about the number of cases still in process. Prospective adoptive parents who have not received a referral letter may wish to verify the status of their case with their adoption service provider.

According to an informal poll of adoption service providers taken in mid August, approximately 600-700 prospective adoptive parents still had an application pending with the DIA and had not yet received referrals. The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, will process to conclusion all adoptions that meet the Government of Vietnam’s criteria and deadlines.

The United States is strongly committed to processing legitimate intercountry adoptions from Vietnam. We have indicated to the Vietnamese our interest in negotiating a new agreement. An important goal for the United States is that any new agreement must establish enforceable safeguards and a transparent process which ensures that the children and families involved in the adoption process are protected from exploitation. The Government of Vietnam shares this concern. Both countries acknowledge that more needs to be done to address deficiencies in the current system. It is not possible, at this time, to predict when a new bilateral adoption agreement may be negotiated and signed.

The entire statement can be read here.

US-Vietnam adoption pact ends, hundreds in limbo
Ben Stocking in Bangkok contributed to this report.

A U.S.-Vietnam adoption agreement expired Monday with the two sides unable to resolve disagreements over fraud and corruption, disappointing hundreds of prospective parents who will have to seek children elsewhere.

The two countries said they will continue trying to iron out their differences, but for now the program will be suspended indefinitely.

Vietnam will continue processing adoptions for parents who had already been matched with orphans before the agreement expired. But the vast majority of the roughly 1,700 families that had cases pending will be disappointed, according to Vietnam’s top adoption official, Vu Duc Long.

Long said he was still tallying the exact number and would release it later this week.

On the eve of the September 1st expiration date of the current Memorandum of Understanding, a sort of sad silence has fallen over the Vietnam adoptive community. Agencies are saying little to nothing. Both governments are mum. Advocacy groups are waiting. Without speaking at all, the anxiousness is palpable. You can hear a pin drop in our community, waiting for something – anything – to be said about the future of adoptions in Vietnam.

Many are left without referrals while their dossiers wait in Vietnam, soon to be returned without a match. Some have been waiting for years already, having carefully chosen highly reputable agencies while watching hundreds of parents receive referrals and come home with their babies. For some, Vietnam adoption was their last best hope to build a family.

Some are left holding “soft” referrals that do not meet the DIA’s definition of a referral quite yet. They wonder whether this child whose face they have grown to love will be allowed to come home or whether they will just silently receive their returned dossier with the rest.

Still others have completed adoptions or have referrals and are just waiting to travel. We are considered to be, by some, the lucky ones. But many of us, while feeling blessed to be afforded the opportunity raise our beloved children, are dealing with the harsh realities of the deep and serious corruption that may have tainted our own adoptions and the likelihood of never knowing the full truth either way. Many of us are finding, as arrests are made in our children’s provinces and investigations are revealing further and further examples of corruption that we are going through our own period of confusion, mourning, depression and anxiety. How will we explain to our children the histories that were robbed from our children? How do we explain the shutdown, the arrests, the closed provinces and the stories of corruption? Can we assure our children that they were not a part of this corruption? Can we hire someone to uncover more information in Vietnam? Can we find out the truth? If not, what do we tell them? How much? And when? How?

Many people are wondering  what  we can do now? What do we do next? How can we help? How can we exact change upon a failed system? How can we help the orphans left behind? How can we work to open up adoption again in Vietnam without sacrificing ethics?

The answers to these questions are difficult and complicated and often evoke more questions than answers.

Do we hire investigators to search for birth parent info? If so, how do we find an ethical investigator? How do we assure that the information uncovered is free of its own brand of corruption? How do we assure that birth parents are respected and privacy is not overstepped?

Do we continue to send financial aid to agencies or other humanitarian aide groups that promise to continue to care for the meek and needy? If so, how do we tell a con from a real path to change? How do we know our dollars are going to help families and children in need and not just continuing to line the pockets of greedy intermediaries as we have seen in the past?

Do we fight with our government for change? If so, is it better that a million single voices are heard or one strong united voice? Is it better to approach our state representatives and advocate for change on the state level? Or does it make more sense to fight for change on a federal level? What can be done to convey our desires to Vietnam’s government?

What goes into the creation of an MOU? Can it be done quickly? Should it be done quickly? Can we learn any lessons from the weaknesses of this expiring MOU? Should, instead, Hague implementation be advocated for?

Although this day brings heartbreak and sadness to so many families, it also brings hope. The MOU offered us a path to adoption but that path was riddled with problems that have affected so many children and their birth families and adoptive families as well. As this adoption program draws to a close, we can close a chapter riddled with corruption and instead focus on a new chapter where all parties- birth families, children and adoptive families – are put first.

In the coming days and weeks we will bring you some of the answers to all of those many questions posed above. We will share resources, we will talk through some of the ethical conundrums we all face, we will talk about the reality of creating a new adoption agreement and we will talk about ways we can all collectively come together to advocate for change from the ground up.

This does not have to be the end. In fact, it is just the beginning.

Last week Vietnamese officials met to review the three years of US-VN adoptions under the Agreement which is to expire on September 1st. The Vietnamese press published three articles on this meeting online, including an interview with the Head of the Ministry of Justice’s International Adoption Agency, Vu Duc Long.

The first article, “Tougher adoption regulations needed” highlights the recent investigation and arrests in Nam Dinh. Apparently it was something of a turning point for Vietnamese officials.

DIA’s Vice Head Le Thi Hoang Yen said: “We are very worried with the recent fake adoption documents. We had been confident about the legitimacy of documents appraised by police. But in recent cases in Nam Dinh Province, there were fakes which police appraised.”

The second article is a brief summary of the status of the U.S.-VN Agreement and includes the following statistics:

By the end of July, about 1,700 disadvantaged Vietnamese children had been adopted by American families, reported the agency.

Over the past three years, 42 adoption organizations in the U.S. have offered humanitarian supports worth US$5.5 million to a lot of children in many provinces and cities in Viet Nam, the conference was told.

The third article, an interview with Dr. Long, is more detailed and provides some insight into possible restructuring plans. It also gives reassurance to families with children from Nam Dinh:

There will be no change for the children who were adopted. The violators in Vietnam will be penalised, the adopted children will not be brought back to Vietnam.

Dr. Long explained that some document forgeries are very hard to discern because they are done at the district level, when the child enters the orphanage. He voiced concerns about district-level orphanges:

What do you think about provinces permitting the establishment of orphanages which are very poor in facilities?
The orphanage in Nam Dinh is a district-level unit, while district-level management is very poor. This is a lesson. Some provinces have inspected local orphanages and closed down some units, for example the Viet Lam orphanage in Phu Tho province.

Some orphanages in southern provinces are being inspected. If district-level orphanages don’t have good facilities and are not managed well, they will be closed.

He also gave general information about plans for restructuring the Vietnamese process:

The strongest solution is the issuance of the Law on Adoption. This law will basically change the management mechanism. Accordingly, the direct relations between orphanages and international adoption agencies will be abolished. Central agencies will directly manage adoption activities and relations with adoptive parents.

In addition, a national unified adoption assistance fund will be set up to diminish financial ambiguity and the ability to seek profit from adoption at grassroots agencies.

The power to make decisions currently belongs to orphanages and locations where the orphanages are located. This power will be centralised.

As we read these three accounts we see a continuing message: Vietnam acknowledges that there has been a problem in the international adoption system that has operated in its country.  To see these three stories printed in the Vietnamese press, in some capacity acknowledging that the situation needs to change, reporting that charges were being filed against Vietnamese orphanage director Tran Thi Luong, calling for a centralized system and an abolishment of the direct relationship between orphanage and agency are all posititve steps.

Yet, there are still major concerns that arrise even as we see positive steps.  In the interview Dr. Long admits that there is very litte recourse for families whose children have been kidnapped:

So who will be sued by families who lose their children?
If their children are kidnapped, they have to sue the kidnappers or those who lend a hand to the kidnappers. We have the Law on Human Trafficking Prevention. In the case in Nam Dinh, it is very difficult to prove kidnapping.

Dr. Long also admits that counterfeit documents are very difficult to verify:

Provincial Departments of Justice are in charge of checking and approving adoption files, so what is their responsibility if violations are detected?
It depends on the seriousness of violations. But it is very difficult to verify adoption documents if they are sophisticated counterfeits, because criminals begin forging documents when children enter orphanages.

Furthermore, the second article,  Vietnam-US Adoption Agreement to end Sept. 1, recognizes another major problem that has existed in Vietnam adoptions: 

“a lack of financial transparency and fierce competition among American adoption organizations have resulted in incorrect information that affects the humanitarian nature of the adoption, said the agency.
 

Many (if not all) of the problems we see in Vietnam adoptions today are the same as those that preceded the prior shutdown. While initially many thought that Vietnam’s process was centralized enough to prevent a recurrance of those issues, it is clear that too many loopholes remained. The question now is, does Vietnam have the will and the ability to close those loopholes?

The U.S. department of state website announced today that Vietnam has confirmed arrests.  While Vietnamese media has reported as many as 24 arrests in as many as 6 provinces, officials have yet to confirm those details.  Officials have, however, confirmed that these cases involved adoption of Vietnamese children by foreign nationals, and also involved completed and pending adoption cases. 

According to the statement:

At present, the Embassy has no information linking these arrests to any other specific intercountry adoption cases.  However, the Government of Vietnam has told us that these investigations are on-going and that, depending on the results of these investigations, they may request the suspension of other adoption cases.

The statement concludes with the DoS affirmation of the Government of Vietnam pursuing the investigations and ensuring the safety of its children.

Today the United States Department of State issued a warning on their website concerning the reliability of documentation of children born at Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.  According to the DOS statement:

In light of these discoveries, the Department of State and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recommend that U.S. adoption service providers refer children born at Tu Du Hospital only when the child is a special need child or when all parties can ensure that the information pertaining to the birth parent can be verified, where a birth parent can be identified and/or when a birth parent can be interviewed to confirm that the child qualifies as an orphan in accordance with U.S. law.

PAP’s with questions regarding their case can contact USCIS with specific concerns at USCIS through HCMAdoptions@dhs.gov.

JCICS, Ethica, and NCFA have joined together to create a survey for all families currently in process in Vietnam, both those with referrals, and those still waiting for referrals. According to JCICS, this survey is “a new tool in our collective advocacy initiative.”

Unfortunately much misinformation exists regarding the number of families still waiting to complete their adoptions. In Vietnam, for example, no reliable information is available on the number of
families with dossiers registered with the Department of Intercountry Adoption.

The cumulative data (no personal information will be shared unless specifically indicated on the survey) will be provided to organizations such as the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute and other advocates such as the Congressional Coalition on Adoption and individual Members of Congress.

Families need to complete the survey by this Friday, August 22nd. Even if you have previously contacted Ethica or one of these other organizations, if you have paperwork in Vietnam you need to complete this survey. If you have friends or family adopting from Vietnam who may not be aware of this initiative, please forward the link to them today.

From the VietNamNet: Gov’t cracks down on human trafficking

Vietnam is stepping up its efforts to crack down on human trafficking rings by proposing the creation of an independent investigative agency and amending the country’s penal code to include the trading of men and unborn children as well as women.

Trafficking in unborn children was first uncovered after a scandal in Ha Tay Province involving the trafficking and sale of infants for adoption broke out in February.

Before being incarcerated, Nguyen Thi Thuyen, the alleged trafficker, once worked at the Ha Tay Centre for Social Beneficiaries Care, where her husband serves as a director.

The centre’s major duties are to process adoption requests and prospective matches.

Seeking windfall profits, Thuyen and her husband had for years convinced young unwed pregnant women to not have an abortion. Instead she advised them to give birth and then adopt their newborns. But Thuyen then resold the newborns for a high price.

Though the Ha Noi police arrested the trafficker, Thuyen’s network was just one of a number of baby-trafficking networks disclosed recently.

The networks usually approach young girls, mostly residing in the provinces of Ha Tay, Hoa Binh, Bac Lieu or HCM City, and offer to buy babies at prices ranging from VND8-15million (US$481-$903.6).

An infant girl can then be resold for VND15 million (US$930), while a baby boy costs VND25-30 million ($1,506-$1,807).

JCICS has posted the State Department’s response to their recent letter written in cooperation with CCAI and signed by 140 members of Congress. The State Department expressed their commitment to “continuing the development of intercountry adoption bilateral cooperation” and then summarized the current situation:

Important aspects of the adoptions process in Vietnam are under the authority of provincial officials. The central government’s ability to control and direct the actions of provincial authorities is limited. It will be challenging to construct an agreement which does not repeat the weaknesses of the existing agreement. The Department is willing to work with the Government of Vietnam to design a limited, transparent, tightly-monitored adoption program that would allow adoptions to continue.

The U.S. Embassy in Vietnam has communicated to senior Vietnamese officials our willingness to negotiate a new agreement within these parameters, so long as Vietnam is making progress towards bringing its laws and procedures to meet Hague Convention standards. Regrettably, there has been no reciprocal GVN commitment to pursue a new bilateral Agreement. We are still awaiting the appointment by the GVN of a senior interlocutor to move this process forward.

Read the full letter at the JCICS website.

According to the Tucson Citizen:
Commonwealth Adoptions closing in Tucson, elsewhere

The board has made a decision to phase out,” President Marina Mayhew said on Tuesday.
She said no new families are being accepted as clients, but those already in the adoption process, which includes about five to 10 in Tucson, will still be served.
“We will make every effort to fulfill their needs,” she said. “I want to emphasize we are a very ethical organization. We are still a licensed agency and we are still here working.”
Concerned clients can call the main office at 327-7574.

Commonwealth Adoptions International was denied Hague accreditation/approval in May 2008.