‘End of the line’ for Ethiopian adoptions

Australians hoping to form a family by adopting children from Ethiopia say they are devastated and baffled by the government’s recent decision to close its adoption program with the Horn of Africa country.

The Attorney-General’s department announced in June that it would shut down the 22-year program because of an ‘increasingly unpredictable’ adoption environment, rising program costs and more opportunities for children to access alternative care within Ethiopia itself.

The department says the Ethiopia program has “long been the most difficult to manage” and the uncertainty around it has kept prospective Australian parents “in limbo for years.” And while acknowledging expecting families will be disappointed, it says the interests of the child must come first.

“We help children find families – not families find children,” said the Attorney-General Nicola Roxon in a speech in July. “We have to be certain the children are orphans or are truly voluntarily being put forward for adoption.”

“The alternative of the government implicitly supporting some dodgy adoptions where the welfare of children comes a distant second to making a bit of money is just not something I can tolerate,” said Roxon.

But prospective parents and adoption groups are unconvinced by the government’s reasons for the closure, which follows a one-year suspension of the program in 2009. At the time the announcement was made, 100 Australian families had files waiting in the adoption system – some for as long as 14 years. They say the Attorney-General has abandoned them, and Ethiopian children, too quickly.

“People are in shock…The program doesn’t fit neatly into all the government’s boxes so now they’ve decided it’s all just a bit too difficult for them,” says Mark Pearce, president of the Australian African Children’s Aid and Support Association (AACASA), the peak support group for families wanting to adopt from Ethiopia. He says the decision has been driven by Australia, not Ethiopia.

“The Ethiopians can’t understand why the decision was made and some of them are highly offended by the actions of the Australian Government,” he says. “They’re very, very protective of their children and they want to make sure the best interests of their children are upheld – but they see that the program was doing just that.”

“Of course a child has the right to grow up knowing their heritage and their history, but children also deserve a loving and secure home and if they face 18 years in an orphanage, they’re not really able to connect, either with their community or their past,” he says.

Adoption groups say the argument that there are fewer children in need of families because of increasing long-term care options within Ethiopia, is unrealistic and lacks an understanding of the pressures of poverty.

UNICEF estimates there are 5 million orphans in Ethiopia, and that 2 million of those children are living below the poverty line.  In a recent report, The Situation of Boys and Girls in Ethiopia 2012, it documents a rise in the number of children in need of alternative care in Ethiopia because of HIV and AIDS, natural disasters, severe poverty, war, internal migration and family breakdowns.

“It’s true Ethiopia is doing a great job supporting local adoptions and they’re to be commended for that,” says Pearce. “But no country has the capacity to place that many orphans through a local adoption program.”

He says a further ‘tragedy’ of the program closure, is that development funds that were part of Australia’s adoption agreement with Ethiopia have also stopped. The funding was small and not directly linked to orphanages connected with Australian adoptions, but it was “a way for Ethiopia to get some resources to address poverty, community development and fund family reunification programs,” says Pearce.

Jacqui Gilmour is director of Hope for Children Australia, part of an Ethiopian NGO that operates group homes in Addis Ababa for children who have lost parents to HIV/AIDS. She too, says Ethiopia’s priority is local adoptions, but that the reality on the ground is very different. “There are just so many children,” she says.

“Local adoption sounds good but it hasn’t worked and the people running the orphanages are worried – asking ‘who’s going to care for those children? Who’s going to take them if these programs shut?’ There’s no government budget for it and they will suffer.”

“We’re seeing teenage pregnancy on the rise, and for the first time, teenage mothers as a group are giving up their children,” says Gilmour. Previously, girls’ families would have absorbed the babies, but now – with the inflation rate at 45% – they’re just not able to.”

On a visit to one orphanage last month, Jacqui said five newborn babies were brought in by police in the one morning. Recent moves by the Ethiopian Government to better regulate orphanages have seen many lose their operating licenses and as a result, government-run centres were struggling with too many babies for their capacity.

“Right now I’m scrambling around looking for a couple of thousand dollars to buy this orphanage the nappies that they’ve begged me for,” she says.

Gilmour says the Ethiopian Government actually considered the Australian adoption program one of its best and wanted to model other programs on its success.  And while the Attorney-General’s department clearly states on its website ‘there is no suggestion of illegal practices in relation to any adoptions previously finalized between Ethiopia and Australia’, suggestions of corruption couched in Nicola Roxon’s statement about ‘dodgy adoptions’ are especially hurtful for adopted children and program partners in Ethiopia.

Broken dreams

Australia’s inter-country adoption laws are some of most rigorous in the world, which also means it is one of the slowest countries from which to adopt. To make an application to the Ethiopia program, prospective parents applied to their State family departments before undertaking background and medical checks, social worker visits and assessments to determine their suitability as parents. If approved, their files would then be sent to Ethiopia for a second approval and hopefully matched with a child.

Mark Pearce says that for most of the 27 families, including his own, who had adoption files ‘in-country’ when the closure was announced – this is the “end of the line.” Other hopeful parents who had files ready to go to Ethiopia are in much the same situation. Many are now ineligible or too old to apply for another program.

“For many of our families, the journey would have started over ten years ago,” says Pearce. For him and his wife it has been a six year wait for their second Ethiopian child. He says; “We’ve got nowhere to go now.”

It’s a feeling shared by Kellie and Antonio Teixeira, who were making plans to receive two new children into their home when the department notified them their adoption would not go ahead. When their file was sent to Ethiopia in November, they began re-decorating bedrooms, buying beds and even a new family wagon.

“Our dreams were shattered with a five-minute phone call when I was in the supermarket,” says Kellie. “Our almost four-year wait was over but not due to an allocation; our file was being returned and no matching would take place. “

This would have been the Teixeiras’ third adoption; In 2006 and 2008 they adopted two babies into their home from the Philippines and Ethiopia. Kellie says her children had helped sort their toys, books and clothes into piles for their new siblings. “We’d increased discussions about what it would feel like to have more children in our home and how it would feel to share – and now we have to explain why this won’t happen.”

But Kellie cannot understand the Attorney-General’s position herself. “What child deserves to be placed into the foster system with no education and no support and love from a direct carer?”

“We know so many families in Ethiopia struggle with extreme poverty and without opportunities of inter-country adoption the number of abandoned babies and street children will most likely increase.”

She says the adoption process in itself is harrowing and support for families since the closure was announced has been ‘disheartening.’ No concrete explanations or ‘proof’ for the decision have been provided and the authorities are still unable to say whether money already paid through the application process will be returned.

Kellie and Antonio Teixeira with their adopted children Metaya and Lachie in Queensland.

As a mother of eight – with three children adopted from Ethiopia – Jacqui Gilmour says she understands the frustrations of would-be parents well. She says there is a lack of compassion from the Australian government.

“Of course the checks and procedures that need to happen all take time, and these are made in the best interests of the children,” she says. “As adoptive parents, we understand this – but it’s an exhausting process and a very uncertain time; the waiting and unknown allocation details make it near impossible to make any other real plans for your life.”

Emails released by the Attorney General’s department under Freedom of Information laws instructed State and Territory department representatives in January not to communicate timeframes around Ethiopia program files to prospective parents to avoid disappointment.

“If contacted by families,” they read, “Please do not indicate a specific number of weeks as some jurisdictions have done so previously and it has created an expectation.”

This was due to uncertainty around arrangements with one of the orphanages in Ethiopia, it said.

Declining adoptions worldwide

The Ethiopia program was Australia’s fourth largest inter-country adoption program, after China, the Philippines and Thailand.  It was the only such program with an African country and has seen 621 Ethiopian children come to Australia since it began in 1990.

But the number of adoptions has fallen in recent years and the program closure reflects a worldwide shift away from inter-country adoption towards a greater focus on in-country care.

Last year, 93 Ethiopian adoption applications were approved by Australian authorities but only 15 placements were made, compared with 72 in 2003-2004. International Social Service (ISS) statistics show a dramatic worldwide decline from 43,142 inter-country adoptions in 2004 to 27,552 in 2010.

“As developing countries become richer, they are now starting to prioritize adoption within their own countries,” said a spokesperson for the Attorney-General’s department.  “It’s such a difficult environment because we know that so many parents want to adopt, but at the same time, we’re not going to arm-wrestle a country to give up kids when that country actually wants those kids to stay.”

An anti-adoption culture?

Adoptive parents and advocates say the Attorney-General’s decision reflects an anti-adoption culture in Australia, which has historical roots in the forced adoptions of the Stolen Generation and Forgotten Children before the 1970s.

A 2005 inquiry into overseas adoption in Australia found there was, in fact, a general attitude against inter-country adoption in most jurisdictions, ranging from ‘indifference or lack of support to outright hostility.’

“Past practices have left a lasting impression and created our country’s distorted perspective on adoption,” said actor/director and adoptive mother Debora-Lee Furness at a National Adoption Awareness Week (NAAW) event last year.

As founding patron of NAAW, she described her own experience navigating the adoption system as impersonal, ‘traumatic, demoralizing and dismissive.’

“We need an attitudinal change within the system,” she said. “Because there’s about to be another generation of lost children and this is a global dilemma.”

***

Groups like AACASA and Hope for Children say that generation in Ethiopia is at risk right now. AACASA says it will continue to lobby the federal government to have the adoption program reinstated and hopes for a change of heart within the department.

The Australian Government has ended its agreement with its partner transition home for children in Ethiopia but will continue to support the country ‘in protecting the best interests of children domestically’ with a $45 million AusAID commitment to maternal and child health initiatives. It says it will periodically monitor circumstances in Ethiopia and in the international adoption environment, and continue discussions about possible new inter-country adoption programs, such as one with South Africa.

Kellie and Antonio Teixeira say any changes will be too late for them, but they hope that by the time their own children are grown up, things might be different. Kellie says her daughter, Metaya, asked her: ‘So now what happens when I want to adopt my child?’

“Because in her 5-year-old mind that’s how she belongs – she understands ‘that’s how I came into your world.’”

See story at SBS World News Australia for more on inter-country adoption in Australia.