I’m not sure if the news out of Vietnam is favorable for the reopening of intercountry adoption. A section of the draft for changes in the adoption system reads as follows:

“Adoption of children by domestic families should be given priority and that by foreigners treated as a last resort, according to a draft law released at a meeting in Hanoi Friday.”

Domestic families should be given priority in adoption – that is the best solution for children in need of families. But the latter part of that statement is worrisome because if “foreigners” are the last resort, then children can spend their lives in orphanages in their country of birth and never have a forever family.

However the fact that the draft law “lengthens the time available for finding domestic families to adopt orphans and other needy children from 30 to 90 days before they are put up for adoption for foreign families” is somewhat encouraging, because foreign families are being mentioned as an option. However I’m cautiously optimistic and here is why. UNICEF is supporting this draft and UNICEF is anti-intercountry adoption.

When UNICEF got involved in Guatemalan adoption, it closed to intercountry adoption.

While the middle class is feeling the squeeze of the global econ freefall like an anorexic loofa and top execs are doing the ape walk under the weight of golden handshakes, the poor of the world are biting the big one, but left with nothing but a mouthful of dust.

As Nicholas Kristof illustrates in this NYT OpEd piece times are not just tough, they are killing.

According to World Bank estimates, the global economic crisis will cause an additional 22 children to die per hour, throughout all of 2009. And that’s the best-case scenario. The World Bank says it’s possible the toll will be twice that: an additional 400,000 child deaths, or an extra child dying every 79 seconds.

We are still seeing a bunch of new visitors who want to know about Myanmar children and Myanmar adoption. They are finding us via google.com. So this update is for the searchers and others who care.

LisaS reported in a recent post that children from Myanmar (formerly Burma) cannot be adopted. The UN is estimating that 100,000 Burmese may have died due to Cyclone Nargis and the aftermath. Or maybe the figure is 127,990 Myanmar dead and growing. And according to Aljazeera:

143,000,000. That is the number of documented orphans worldwide, so probably a conservative estimate.

Anti-adoption rhetoric, particularly concerning intercountry adoption, claims that the money we spend adopting (often up to $30,000+- for services to adopt one child) would be better spent on the families  that are placing children for adoption, so the children could remain with their birth parents.

Here is the inherent weakness in that theory:

1.    Poverty is not the sole reason children are placed for adoption, even in third world countries. Rape, incest, pregnancy out of wedlock, no desire to raise another child, no access to birth control or safe abortion are some others.

2.    Giving money to needy families without simultaneously making dramatic changes in the social, economical, geographical and political fabric of the area they live in is just a short term fix with no long term effect.

3.    Without education, equal rights, and the ability to control the number of pregnancies they have, women are powerless and will continue to give birth to children they cannot care for. The birth rate in Guatemala, for example, is one of the highest in the world.

4.    Throwing money at a problem does not work. Pockets of the corrupt are often fattened by donations, and even though trillions have gone to third world countries from the U.S. alone – the results are minimal in some of the most destitute of areas.

5.   Should the existing orphans, who have no families at this point, have to suffer their whole lives (if they survive beyond childhood) because someday, maybe in another generation or two, life will improve in their country, or because UNICEF and other "well meaning" organizations have decided that they are better off starving and destitute in their own countries? That is sheer arrogance in my opinion.