Govt to form body to regulate adoption
Move comes after irregularity charges
Santosh Pokharel
2010-10-23
KATHMANDU: As an effort to regulate the inter-country child adoption, the government is going to set up an independent body to handle the adoption related issues by amending the existing law in Nepal.
The decision comes at a time when the countries regularly adopting orphans from Nepal halted inter-country child adoption indefinitely citing irregularities, especially use of falsified documents. Amid growing allegations of child trafficking and falsification of documents, the USA, on August 6, had indefinitely suspended child adoption programme also from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain.
“We have forwarded a proposal to this effect to the Cabinet for the approval seeking an independent body,” said Mahendra Shrestha, secretary at the Ministry of Women Children and Social Welfare. “In line with the Hague Convention on Adoption, an independent regulating body is mandatory to deal with the issues related to child adoption.”
With a new amendment in the law, the government will strictly rein in the Children Homes that provide children for adoption. After the amendment, only those homes or orphanages operating for more than five years will be eligible to provide children for adoption. “The amendment to the existing law is to control the possibility of the child trafficking in the name of protection,” added Shrestha.
According to a ministry source, the new body will have the authority to probe the documents.
In the meantime, American Ambassador to Nepal Scott H DeLisi, in a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sujata Koirala, today urged the government to ratify the law and implement the Hague Convention on Adoption, which was meant to protect the rights of the children and the families involved in inter-country adoption.
Following the report by the Hague Conference on Private International Law in February, which had accused Nepal’s adoption system of widespread abuse, many western countries have been pointing finger at the adoption scene in Nepal.
After finding some fraud cases of fake civil documents — such as the children’s birth certificates were changed or fabricated — the US embassy in Kathmandu is learnt to have conducted investigations on its own.
Children homes reportedly collect US$ 5,000 from each child on the completion of the adoption, whereas the prospective parents should pay US$ 3,000 as revenue to the government of Nepal. “We will leave no stone unturned to send the genuine orphans for adoption,” said Shrestha.
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