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tive presented studies claiming toprovide evidence that the citizenso Europe are in avor o suchEuropean regulations.

Post continues to work or Brus-sels and is ocially permitted bythe EU to work at her organiza-tion, Against Child Tracking.It is an unusual situation becauseher organization campaignsagainst EU policy. Post pays allexpenses linked to the organiza-tion out o her own pocket. Shehas an assistant, 36-year-old ArunDohle rom Aachen.

Both share the common goalo abolishing oreign adoption. Itis an extreme position but onethey hope will become a reality in

ve years because they believe theworld o adoptions is a world with-out real controls. The oce o theHague Convention, which estab-lishes the rules governing adoption,conducts just as ew investigationsas national authorities.

The largest German adoptionagency, International Child Care,had its license withdrawn due toirregularities although an inquiryhas not yet been held. Family ForYou, the largest agency in Austria,went bankrupt ollowing a serieso compensation claims becauseit had negligently arranged theadoptions o children who werenot orphans. Public prosecutorsare taking no action. Pro Inante,

another German adoption agency,also closed down because theagency placed Indian childrenwith German amilies and incor-rectly declared them orphans.Hundreds o cases were neverinvestigated and never clearedup. Terre des Hommes, the larg-est German agency in the 1970s,ceased its adoption activities dueto irregularities and at the requesto its members.

Post and her colleague Dohlerepeatedly come across caseswhere documents have beentampered with and children arewrongly declared orphans andput up or adoption. At the endo the day, this arrangement ishighly lucrative or some people.

They have collected hundreds osuch cases to date and believethat many more adoptions arefawed. In 2009, Dohle spent aweek traveling through Malawi,talking to human rights groups,journalists and court judges aboutMadonnas planned adoption.Post says people in Malawi werenot aware o the legal concept oan adoption and its consequences.Though the courts may have even-tually authorized Madonnasadoption attempt, Dohle and Poststill view their eorts as a success.Their assessments and argumentsappeared in many reports, includ-ing court documents, and Madon-nas adoption has remained an

exception in Malawi.Dohle and Posts work is impor-tant, says Wolgang Weitzel, heado the National Center or ForeignAdoption in Bonn, because thereare too many people who will doanything to achieve their adoptiongoal. Any irregularities must beinvestigated, he says.

Thomas Klippstein, head othe German delegation sent toStrasbourg by the German JusticeMinistry, said at the conerencethat although the Hague Conven-tion is in need o improvement, hewas not convinced o the needto incorporate an additional legalinterace, or in other words, totranser responsibility to the EU.This would in any case only be

possible i all member states votedin avor o such a move. Plans tointroduce a European adoptionauthority could be halted by justone no vote rom Germany, orexample n

Former EU ocialRoelie Post campaignsworldwide againstoreign adoption. Shesays the line betweenoreign adoption andchild tracking is toooten blurred. She alsosees potential dangerin plans to introduce atransnational EuropeanAdoption authority.

W

hen Roelie Post,along with a trans-lator and a lmcrew, set o or

Romania some months ago andvisited Marineta Ciou, the storythe child rights activist heard wasa very amiliar one. Ciou had noidea what had happened to herchild. Almost 10 years ago, pov-erty had orced the single motherto leave her daughter in a chil-drens home. But it was her rmintention to get her back as soonas her situation improved. Thelast time she saw her daughterwas when she was two-and-halyears old.

But her daughter had disap-peared. Ocials did not want togive Ciou any inormation. It wasonly 10 years later that Ciou dis-covered that an American amily

had adopted her daughter. Thetransaction was recorded in docu-ments ound by Post that Cioudid not understand.

How can someone take a childaway without my signature, sheasked. Golineh Atai, a journalistrom the German regional publicbroadcaster WDR, recently trav-eled to Romania with Post andmade a lm on the subject. Thelm, Suche Kind, zahle bar Die Adoptionslobby (ChildWanted, Cash Paid The Adop-tion Lobby) was broadcast lastSeptember on WDR and can bewatched on YouTube.

Post, 50, was a European Unionocial or 20 years. From 1999 to2005 she was responsible or or-

eign adoptions rom Romania andEU enlargement. Since then, theBrussels ocial has been workingto expose cases o child trackingthat are masquerading as oreignadoptions.

Poverty is no reason to takechildren away, she said. Povertyis not a disease and internationaladoptions are not a solution. I ontop o everything else, people alsolose their children it only worsenstheir overall situation.

Ciou was prevented rom vis-iting her daughter in the chil-drens home ater she gave herup. And because she did not visitthe child, her legal guardianshipwas taken away rom her. Tac-

tics such as relocating a child tomake it impossible or parentsto visit them is a trick used bychild trackers to gain access toabandoned children throughocial channels.

Following the end o Roma-nias communist rule, oreign-ers adopted more than 30,000children rom the country within10 years. Most o them were notorphans.

Romanian couples seeking toadopt, in contrast, did not standa chance. They could not aordit. Americans, or example, paidsome $30,000 in ees or onechild. Multiplied by 30,000 chil-dren, that amounts to a turn-over o $900 million. The ormer

director o Romanias adoptionauthority, Theodora Bertzi, in2006 said that this number wasnot exaggerated.

This lucrative amount created anunchecked, maa-like system o

adoption agencies in Romania thatput prot ahead o child welare.

Around hal o these childrenended up in the US and the otherhal in European countries, includ-ing Germany. In Germany, thereare about 10 couples wanting toadopt or every child given up oradoption. Consequently, many

German couples try to adopt roma oreign country.

In Romania today, 43,000 chil-dren live in state-run childrenshomes or in oster care. Just 800are regarded as suitable or adop-tion. And in each one o thesecases, there are two Romaniancouples waiting to adopt, saidUNICEF representative in Roma-nia Edmond McLoughney. So inactual act, there is no need orinternational applications.

In 2001, Romania imposed amoratorium on oreign adoptions.Soon ater, an American adoptionagency took Romania unsuccess-ully to court. Aterward, the USdemanded numerous exceptions.

These theoretically only concernedapplications that had been madebeore the moratorium. But in act,they didnt. Until 2004, exceptionswere made on an almost dailybasis and another 1,000 childrenwere placed with oreign amilies,according to documents rom theRomanian adoption authorities.

In regards to adoption, Roma-nia became a place where peopleelt they could just come and helpthemselves. And people like Postwho did not want to turn a blindeye to the situation were viewedas annoying intererence. Whenher boss, Gnter Verheugen, gaveup his post as EU Commissioneror Enlargement, Post was trans-erred elsewhere overnight. She

elt manipulated and ell ill.Committing her experiences to

paper became therapy or Post.The resulting book, Romania For Export Only, was sel-published in 2007. In an inter-

view with WDR, her ormer bossVerheugen conrmed what Postwrote in her book. There is avery well organized lobby that isin truth operating a kind o childtracking system under the guiseo adoptions, said Verheugen.He also spoke o what he calleda child acquisition policy. He

said he had seen with his owneyes how catalogues were passedaround to interested parties, inwhich one could choose a child.

When Romanian Prime Min-ister Adrian Nastase visited USDeense Secretary Colin Powellin Washington in 2001, their talksocially centered on RomaniasNATO membership. But in actualact, Powell wanted to talk aboutthousands o American coupleswho had applied to adopt romRomania and who were waitingor their children. Powell calledor exceptions to be made to themoratorium on adoptions.

Verheugen said in these meet-ings, the US had drawn a politi-

cal link between the clearance ochildren or adoption and Roma-nias accession to NATO. I didntthink that could be possible. Hewent on to say that the politicalpressure repeatedly came romthe same countries: rom France,Italy, Spain, Israel and the US. Inother words, rom countries withhigh oreign adoption rates. Themayor o Bucharest even declaredthose exceptions on a lobby list:For every child adopted, a toppolitician was named as a sponsor.American senators such as EdwardKennedy and John Kerry and EUCommission President RomanoProdi even appeared on that list.

I was horried, said Verheu-gen. Prodi eventually withdrew

his sponsorship but Italian PrimeMinister Silvio Berlusconi calledor an exception to be made andsecured the clearance o 100 chil-dren or adoptive parents. Thequestion o the Romanian chil-

dren was one o the bitterest andmost painul experiences o myentire political lie, Verheugensaid o the situation.

He was speaking in the pasttense but does the situation lookany better now? When the Euro-pean Commission and the Coun-cil o Europe invited around 150

experts and government represen-tatives to a two-day conerence inStrasbourg early last December,Post says that although the agendaostensibly ocused on the introduc-tion o a pan-European adoptionpolicy, talks actually centered onthe opening up o the Romanianadoption market. And indeed, asa commission employee conrmedto a Romanian journalist, the aimo the conerence was to secure anend to the moratorium.

Preparations or the openingo the market in Romania havebeen going on or years. One othe key actors in the process isthe head o the French adoptionorganization SERA, Francois de

Combret. He may not have beenpresent in Strasbourg but the con-erence echoed his views. Threeyears ago in the same place, theadoption lobby managed to con-vince EU parliamentarians to callor a liting o the moratorium.Aterward, both the EuropeanCommission and the EuropeanParliament began working on anadoption policy or Europe.

Romania does not want to litits moratorium but this is not aproblem or the adoption lobby.This is because in the uture, everyadoption within Europe will beexactly that: European. All adop-tions will be registered and moni-tored by a European adoptionauthority. This would mean scrap-

ping adoptions on a national level.Responsibility would no longer liewith the national governments butwith the EU. At the close o thesecond day o the conerence, theEuropean Commission representa-

US +45%22,884

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

US France

1988 1998 2004

Ital Canada Spain

France +8%4,079

Canada -12%1,955

Spain +273%5,541

Italy+52%3,400

TRENDS IN THE COUNTRIES WITH THE HIGHEST ADOPTION RATESTOTAL NUMBER OF ADOPTIONS IN 1988, 1989 AND 2004

TOP 5 COUNTRIES

ADOPTIONS IN 2004 AND THE CHANGE OVER 1998 ADOP TIONS OVER THE PA ST 20 yE ARS

13,964

25,493

37,862

22,884

15,774

9,120

2,4412,078

23293

3,7772,233

2,2221,487

4,0793,400

1,9555,541

Child wanted, cash paidThe shady world of adoption | By Thomas Schuler

Madonnas adoption of two children from Malawi inspired international criticism. So far, the southern

African country did not have binding regulations on adoptions from abroad, which was exploited by

adoption agencies.

ap/KaRELpRINSLOO

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