A very good story this morn­ing talks about the delays and chal­lenges in seek­ing adop­tion. The story focuses on Haiti, where the adop­tion process has slowed to tak­ing up to 2 years. Many fac­tors are blamed for the delays, includ­ing polit­i­cal unrest in the nation, the food riots of last year, and some are even blam­ing UNICEF.

From the News Jour­nal writer Kelly Cucu­lian­sky writes about expec­tant adopter Robin Gar­land who has been wait­ing to adopt Jen­nifer Casanave from Haiti. If you really want your heart strings pulled click on link to the entire story.

Gar­land left the orphan­age that day bound for home, not know­ing what trou­bles would lie ahead for the girl’s coun­try. Within three weeks of her visit, she opened an e-mail from the adop­tion agency, detail­ing the begin­nings of food riots that broke out ear­lier this month.

Young­sters nor­mally receive snacks and three meals a day, con­sist­ing of goat or beef, black beans and rice. Dur­ing the riots, Cayo said the orphan­age expe­ri­enced a food short­age, but “man­aged.” Rice was up to $80 for a 100-pound bag, while a gal­lon of gaso­line was sell­ing for $6.

“Last week was the first time we have seen some­thing like that hap­pen (in Petionville),” Cayo said.

The town, con­sid­ered a wealthy sub­urb where most of Haiti’s polit­i­cal and eco­nomic elite live, is in the hills east of the nation’s cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince. Dur­ing the riots, Cayo said store­fronts and car win­dows were smashed, tires were set ablaze and there were some road­blocks, “but not much damage.”

SLOW ADOPTIONS

With the protests now mostly over, Lori Jones, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the orphanage’s par­ent orga­ni­za­tion, A New Arrival Adop­tion Agency, hopes the recent oust­ing of the country’s prime min­is­ter will make a dif­fer­ence in the adop­tion system’s red tape.

“We’ve never had a failed adop­tion in Haiti,” she said from agency head­quar­ters in Twin Bridges, Mont. “But about three years ago, the adop­tions were pro­cess­ing in six to nine months.”

Now, it could take 16 to 24 months. Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of State immi­grant visa sta­tis­tics, Hait­ian adop­tions to U.S. fam­i­lies have been on a decline. In 2004, about 356 were adopted from Haiti. Last year, there were only 190.

“Haiti, by far, is one of the most dif­fi­cult coun­tries we’ve ever had to work in,” said Jones, whose agency has worked in 13 other countries.

It’s espe­cially upset­ting because nearly all the chil­dren in the orphan­age have new moms and dads wait­ing for them in Amer­ica, she said. The most recent adop­tion occurred in November.

Jones said most of the delays have to do with the nation’s polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity. The changes in gov­ern­ment staff and offi­cials tend to slow the pro­cess­ing of applications.

But Jones also said UNICEF could be affect­ing the pace of adop­tions. She said UNICEF is express­ing con­cern to gov­ern­ment offi­cials about the pos­si­bil­ity of child traf­fick­ing and a high num­ber of adoptions.

“I do believe that they have met and have tried to influ­ence one side of a very com­pli­cated process,” Jones said.

Geof­frey Keele, a UNICEF spokesman, said while the agency makes it a pri­or­ity to reunite chil­dren with their fam­i­lies in their coun­try of ori­gin, it has never opposed inter­na­tional adoptions.

“Our view­point is that fam­i­lies need to be sup­ported so they can remain together as much as pos­si­ble,” he said. “We just want to make sure that there is always a need for appro­pri­ate safe­guards and trans­parency in these adop­tion processes.”

For Eliz­a­beth Bart­ho­let, a Har­vard Law School pro­fes­sor who has writ­ten exten­sively about adop­tion, there is a dis­turb­ing trend among the declin­ing inter-country adop­tions over the last three years. She also blames UNICEF, say­ing the orga­ni­za­tion is “vig­or­ously” oppos­ing inter­na­tional adop­tion by encour­ag­ing coun­tries to be more restrictive.

“They basi­cally do not seem to see it as one of the appro­pri­ate solu­tions for chil­dren in need,” she said.

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