Media

Letter to Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper (Germany)

A letter to a German newspaper following an article on international adoptions from Romania.

June 2006

Sir,

I appreciated the article in your publication regarding the international adoption industry. Your journalist N. Mappes-Niedek provided a good overview of this sordid and corrupt business, which has led to thousands of innocent Romanian children being sent abroad to unknown families in different cultures. Although there have been happy examples, your reporter is right to say that most children are just never heard of again and we all know that the Romanian authorities cannot follow up these cases as each child adopted to another country has its birth certificate and nationality changed (this is standard procedure).

However, there is one problem with your article that I would like to object to: the title is misleading. I assume the title of the article (“Business with Romanian children has become attractive again”) was ironic and while this is understandable in usual circumstances, the whole story of international adoptions is far from usual.

In fact, there is a well funded and very active international lobby campaign to get international adoptions from Romania started again and they use every opportunity (even a headline like yours) to advance their cause. This lobby is based on the huge profits to be made from transactions in children – up to 30,000 euro a child, according to my US sources – and they are desperate to show that things have not improved in Romania as their sales pitch is essentially that international adoption is the only solution for Romanian children in difficulty. In fact, Romania is one of the only Central European countries that has managed to stop the flow of children into institutions.

Emma Nicholson MEP