KYRGYZSTAN: Lawmakers lift ban on foreign adoptions

Record ID: 608055

  • Title: KYRGYZSTAN: Lawmakers lift ban on foreign adoptions
  • Date: 18th May 2011
  • Summary: VARIOUS CHILDREN IN CRIBS CHILDREN'S HOME PEDIATRICIAN, GULZHAN ASHYMOVA STANDING NEAR CRIB WORKERS NEAR CHILDREN'S PLAY PEN VARIOUS CHILDREN IN PLAY PEN (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) CHILDREN'S HOME PEDIATRICIAN, GULZHAN ASHYMOVA, SAYING: "If (we're talking about) sick children, like those with severe birth defects or with cleft palates - our local citizens don't take them, don't adopt them, because there were incidents where they rejected in birth houses. Our mentality (in Kyrgyzstan) is such that they're going to be harassed because of that. Secondly, we have a difficult social situation, you know - parents (sometimes have) financial difficulties." VARIOUS CHILDREN IN PLAY PEN (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) CHILDREN'S HOME PEDIATRICIAN, GULZHAN ASHYMOVA, SAYING: "Children like this (with handicaps) are mostly taken by foreign adoptive parents. To compare to their level to ours, it's just heaven and earth, because they continue to work with these children (to help them)." VARIOUS CHILDREN IN CHILDREN'S HOME
  • Embargoed: 2nd June 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan
  • Country: Kyrgyzstan
  • Topics: Domestic Politics,Social Services / Welfare
  • Reuters ID: LVAAO0TLL8V9MX8RBIYLBWXKB56L
  • Story Text: Lawmakers in Kyrgyzstan have lifted a two-year moratorium on international adoption, allowing foreigners wishing to adopt Kyrgyz children to start the adoption process, from May 6, 2011.
    The new law, which was unanimously approved by the Kyrgyz parliament last month, allows for non-citizens to adopt Kyrgyz children but imposes stringent controls to protect children from trafficking, abuse or exploitation.
    The ban was enforced in 2009, after concerns were that the former Soviet republic's Family Code did not sufficiently regulate adoption, leading to criticism that loopholes in the law left Kyrgyz children vulnerable to risk once they left the country.
    Furthermore, lack of control was seen as fertile ground for corruption with officials, adoption agencies and bureaucrats accused of accepting bribes in exchange for speeding up the adoptions.
    In the recently amended version of the Family Code, Kyrgyzstan's Social Welfare Ministry is now the overseeing body for all adoption cases.
    "In our country there is terrible corruption in the adoption system. Healthy children are just sold in birth hospitals, whereas there aren't people interested in sick children. Our sick children who have cleft palates and heart disease, lay like vegetables in tiny children's beds and just rot in children's 'concentration camps'," said Kyrgyzstan Parliament deputy, Shirin Aymatova, who initiated the amendment to the Family Code allowing foreign adoptions.
    Aymatov said she believes it is better for a foreigner to adopt the children than for them to live in orphanages.
    The change in the law will speed up adoptions of many children who have been rejected by prospective parents in Kyrgyzstan.
    Dzhanyl Sukenbaeva, director of the Kyrgyzstan Republic Department for the Protection of Children gave examples of children with a difficult history of adoption within Kyrgyzstan, who have since been adopted abroad.
    " Well, this child for example. Take a look - she was adopted after (other) parents had rejected her three times in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. This child was returned to the orphanage three times through the court. In the end the child was adopted into a different country," Sukenbaeva said.
    Close to 11,000 orphans and abandoned children live in Kyrgyzstan's approximately 120 children's homes and orphanages. The majority of abandoned children have birth defects or severe disabilities, physical and mental.
    The new Family Code gives priority to Kyrgyz families in adoptions, but Paediatrician Gulzhan Ashymova said that most Kyrgyz adoptive families did not want children with birth defects or handicaps and many do not have the financial means to support a child.
    "If (we're talking about) sick children, like those with severe birth defects or with cleft palates - our local citizens don't take them, don't adopt them, because there were incidents where they rejected in birth houses. Our mentality (in Kyrgyzstan) is such that they're going to be harassed because of that. Secondly, we have a difficult social situation, you know - parents (sometimes have) financial difficulties," Ashymova said.
    She said 70 percent of the children in the children's home where she worked had been abandoned by their parents.
    Ashymova said almost all handicapped children were adopted by non-Kyrgyz citizens.
    "Children like this (with handicaps) are mostly taken by foreign adoptive parents. To compare to their level to ours, it's just heaven and earth, because they continue to work with these children (to help them)," Ashymova said.
    The new Kyrgyz Family Code was reportedly drafted more than a year ago, but political upheaval in 2010 in Kyrgyzstan set back its implementation.
    According to U.S. reports, 235 Kyrgyz children were adopted by parents from the U.S., Israel, Italy, Germany and Australia in the three years before the moratorium was imposed.
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