The decision announced by Kenya’s government follows a cabinet meeting chaired by president Uhuru Kenyatta bring the subject of inter-country adoption back on the international stage.
Kenya’s ban follows an earlier one by Ethiopia last year and as part of a growing global trend towards either complete elimination or shark restriction of cross-border child adoptions foreign child. adoption in Africa is an emotive subject with concerns raised over child trafficking and abuse cultural displacement and unregulated adoption frameworks but with many children still in need of safe and secure environments to grow up in our domestic options alone able to meet the needs of these children and what will be the fate of inter-country adoptions in Africa.
There was a time when foreign adoptions from Africa were rare in 2003. for example inter-country adoptions from Africa are reported to have accounted for only 5% of the world total. However, this figure rose to 25% by 2012 representing a staggering increase of almost 400% making Africa. The new frontier for the adoption of children by foreign nationals the steep rise was triggered by prevailing issues such as conflict famine poverty and the AIDS epidemic in this era. Hollywood had also come calling with several high-profile adoptions by celebrities shining a spotlight on adoption from Africa. However times have since changed experts relate improved economic conditions changed national policies and growing peace to the reduction in Africa’s foreign adoptions which have since dropped by an estimated 72 percent in the past decade. This is in line with the global figure which has seen a similar decline. with me today is a panel of experts specialized in the topic of child.
Three main international instruments regulate intercountry adoption. These are:
• The convention on the rights of the child (CRC)
• The African charter on the rights and Welfare of the child (AcrWc)
• The 1993 hague convention on the Protection of children and cooperation in respect of intercountry Adoption (hague convention).
The CRC and the ACRWC interpret adoption (both domestic and intercountry) as the provision of a measure of protection for children deprived of their family environment. They clearly state that in using adoption as a form of alternative care for these children, the children’s best interests must be the paramount consideration. furthermore, the provisions of both the CRC and the ACRWC clearly indicate that intercountry adoption should be used as a measure of last resort.
Natural calamities, war, extreme poverty, accidents, terminal diseases, epidemics, etc. are among the reasons that could deprive a child of natural family environment turning them into an orphan and/or vulnerable.5 Orphan problems are universal, but the magnitude varies from one geographical location to the other.6 In 2015, there were nearly 140 million orphans globally including 61 million in Asia, 52 million in Africa, 10 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 7.3 million in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.7 This figure includes orphans who had lost both parents and “half” or “single” orphans who had lost only one parent.
