Here is an update from the JCICS on what going on in Guatemala!! It is very sad & sickening!On January 1, 2008, under significant scrutiny and amidst allegations of corruption, child trafficking and unethical practices, Guatemala implemented the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. Now, 12 months since its implementation, has the Convention truly been the answer? Unfortunately the manner in which Guatemala implemented the Convention has not resulted in an ethical intercountry adoption system; it has resulted in no intercountry adoption system. The implementation of the Convention has indeed succeeded in adding protections. But it has also failed in its role to serve children. Despite an estimated 6,000 institutionalized children and few domestic adoptions, not one child has found a permanent family through the Convention. When the Convention was implemented the law stated that the estimated 3,000 adoptions that had been initiated would be completed. One year and countless investigations by the PGN, MP, CNA and Guatemalan courts later, over 1,000 children have yet to have their adoptions completed. As recently published by Nuestro Diario, a leading Guatemalan newspaper, children are being abandoned to the streets at an alarming rate. With few government institutions to provide care and the closure of many private institutions, some birthmothers are simply leaving their newly born children in trash dumps. Nuestro Diario reports that in Guatemala City alone, 91 children were found abandoned with 70 being new born infants. Twenty abandoned children in Guatemala City were found after they had already perished. (Can you imagine this has been reported to have happened in the first 12 months and only reported in Guatemala City...how many children are found in this very same condition in other cities and small villages? What will the number be next year?? It sickens me to even think about it!)What is being done to build a social service system which not only protects children from corruption but also from a tragic death? The formation of a spectrum of services including Family Preservation, Kinship Care, Domestic Adoption and Intercountry Adoption is desperately needed to ensure that children retain their right to a family and are protected from the detrimental effects of institutionalization, or even an unnecessary death.
