Adoption champion Guatemala to tighten rules
27.10.2003
By FRANK JACK DANIEL

GUATEMALA CITY - Curly-haired two-year-old Jenifer Consuelo Sem clings to her mother's skirt and plays quietly in the office of Sandra Zayas, Guatemala's prosecutor of crimes against women.

Jenifer has been reunited with 22-year-old Yulisa Suhaira Sem Castillo after being snatched at knifepoint in August while returning from the corner store with her six-year-old brother.

After a frantic week-long search, she was found by police in an illegal foster home near the city centre. According to Zayas, the girl was kidnapped so she could be sold into international adoption.

"Those eight days weren't days; they were years. All I could do was cry," said her mother, a textile worker from a poor southern suburb of Guatemala City.

With nearly 3000 babies legally leaving the country last year, Guatemala has the highest per capita rate of international adoptions in the world, bringing an estimated $US45 million ($NZ74.85 million) a year into the poor Central American nation.

It also has one of the world's least-regulated adoption processes, and people seeking to adopt can bypass most state controls, dealing instead with the biological parent through a private lawyer and an adoption agency.

While the majority of adoptions are legal, high-profile police raids have brought into the public eye the more shadowy aspects of the business, a problem throughout Central America.

On September 21, Costa Rican police discovered nine Guatemalan babies during a raid on an unlicensed adoption agency in the Costan Rican capital of San Jose.

"The youngest was 17 weeks old," said Zayas, "We have not yet identified the children, but I find it hard to believe such a young child could have been legitimately adopted."

Zayas said that this year alone, she has dealt with 30 cases of stolen children, and that many involve an extensive network that includes lawyers, midwives, doctors and civil registrars dedicated to stealing newborn babies and young children.
Cases like those finally led to Guatemala's ratification earlier this year of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption which gives governments greater control over adoptions.

But on September 12, to the relief of prospective adoptive parents caught in a legal limbo, an appeal by 90 Guatemalan lawyers successfully overturned the ratification on the basis that it contravened their constitutional rights.

The turnaround means business as usual at least until a proposed adoption law reaches Congress. Experts are sceptical that the law, due to be discussed in November, will be passed this year.

Zayas hopes that if approved, the new law will prevent stolen babies from being sent into adoption.

Compulsory DNA testing to verify that those putting babies up for adoption are indeed their parents is proposed in the new law and is one measure that, while open to abuse, would make it harder to send stolen babies overseas.

The United States already requires DNA testing but it is not compulsory under Guatemalan law, and many countries do not demand it.

At present, it is possible for a child to be given up for adoption on the basis of only the thumb print of the presumed biological mother, who does not have to be present when the magistrate makes the final decision on the case.

For those who opposed the new regulations, low fertility in northern countries combined with high birth rates in Guatemala creates a win-win situation, where unwanted children are given good homes, and couples biologically unable to have children have an opportunity to build a family.

Guatemalan adoption lawyer Susan Luarca believes that international adoption is a force for good and a way of addressing problems of poverty. "For us adoption is not a business; it is a mission," she said.

Luarca says tighter rules would stop adoptions from Guatemala and could put around 25,000 children currently in private orphanages on the streets.

"Without the financial support that private homes receive from adoptions and international donations, how are they expected to survive? The fate of these children could well be death," she said.

Gladys Acosta, Unicef representative to Guatemala, said those wanting to adopt rarely accept the generally older children found in orphanages.

"When someone wants to adopt, there is a search...Those that are already institutionalised are not adopted," she said.
To adopt a newborn baby, prospective parents pay up to $US25,000, most of which passes through the hands of a Guatemalan lawyer.

This commercial aspect and the emphasis on the needs of the adoptive parents disturbs Bruce Harris, director of the children's rights organisation Casa Alianza.

"It used to be that in an adoption we would look for the best family for the child. Now it is the family looking for the best child they want to adopt," he said.
- REUTERS