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Copy of Summary from Draft ISS report for UNICEF on ICA in

Vietnam.

Summary of Key Observations

Intercountry adoptions from Vietnam are essentially demand driven.

Thus the availability of children who are adoptable abroad corresponds

more to the existence of foreign prospective adopters than to the actual

needs of the abandoned and orphaned children. As a result the

overwhelming majority of adopted children are under one year of age, the

age-group most sought by prospective adopters. Since only a relatively

small and ever-decreasing number of other countries of origin are

currently making children of this age adoptable abroad, foreign actors

have proved willing to accept conditions put in place by Vietnam for processing these adoptions. There is also considerable pressure from

abroad for Vietnam to continue as a source of very young children.

The circumstances under which babies become adoptable are

invariably unclear and disturbing. Declarations of so-called

abandonment are intriguingly frequent, with unexplained peaks and

troughs. Procedures for verifying the childs status and, inter alia, for

ensuring free and informed consent to adoption are inadequate and

inconsistent. Decision making on the availability of a child for

intercountry adoption as opposed to domestic adoption (including return

to the biological family) seems to take no account of the subsidiary nature

of adoption abroad, with little or no effort being made to establish the

childs real need for the latter or to identify in-country care opportunities.

The intercountry adoption system is grounded in a remarkably

unhealthy relationship between agencies and specific residential

facilities. It involves compulsory and sizeable financial contributions by

agencies in the form of humanitarian aid to facilities that they

themselves have identified as potential partners in ICA. The question ofaid generally seems to be given far more importance than ensuring that

ICA is resorted to as an exceptional measure on a case-by-case basis.

Agencies compete with each other to secure children and tend to expect

that children will be indicated to them for ICA processing according to

the amount of humanitarian aid provided. Agencies are subject to little or

no monitoring, and neither they nor the residential facilities they work

with have any incentive to address or notify problems, since the way the

system presently functions is to advantage of both.

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Governments and Central Authorities of receiving countries

collectively at least, and individually in many instances have not

effectively committed themselves to applying the basic principles of

the Hague Convention 1993, or the recommendations of the Special

Commission on the treatys practical operation, in their dealings withVietnam. They have therefore been sending out mixed hence eminently

unhelpful messages on the acceptability of the current system. These

frequently seem to respond to pressures more to pressures within their

respective countries than to tackling identified problems. In most cases,

embassies have virtually no knowledge of how their countrys agencies

are operating, let alone being in a position to verify the compliance with

international standards of adoptions to their country.

Vietnams desire for rapid accession to the THC-93 constitutes ahighly positive perspective. It will nonetheless require not only far

reaching legislative changes, which Vietnam already envisages, but also a

fundamental change in outlook, including in particular a total divorce

between humanitarian aid and other financial contributions and the ICA

of those of its children who may require this measure. The success of

reform efforts will depend not only on Vietnam itself but also on the

willingness and ability of foreign actors other than agencies to provide

active assistance, including in the development of preventative child

welfare measures and of functioning child protection systems, based on a

deinstitutionalisation strategy and the consequent expansion of alternative

care options for vulnerable children.