Hey readers! Here is a pretty decent media piece on upcoming changes in Guatemalan adoption. It is from a local Milwaukee station. Click on the link at the end of of this entry.
For those of you who are not following the whole Guatemalan adoption process, it is a very complicated situation. Basically, there is an international treaty on international adoption called the Hague Treaty. It was created with the idea of protecting children, birth parents and adoptive parents. Sadly, like many bureaucratic attempts at solutions to complex human situations, the treaty solves some problems, and creates new problems.
The US plans to become compliant with this treaty some time in the Spring of 2008. Guatemala, which has been criticized for corruption in many areas, including adoptions, surprised the international adoption community recently by announcing that they would become compliant with the treaty on December 31, 2007, ahead of the US. No country that is complaint with the treaty can conduct an adoption with a country that has signed the treaty (like the US) but has not fully implemented it. That means that if Guatemala does what it says it is going to do in December, Guatemala will not be able to conduct adoptions with the US until the US fully implements the Hague.
Now my case has already finished what needs to be done on the Guatemalan side, so my adoption is not in danger, even if I am not home by the end of December. But for many other families, they are very frightened by what might happen to their children. Guatemala has no infrastructure in place to take care of the children who are currently living in foster homes or orphanages at the expense of the families who plan to adopt them. No one knows what will happen to these children if Guatemala shuts down adoptions to the US.
