Adoption or trafficking? Fears grow for Uganda's 'orphans' [View all]

[me b zola]

Adoption or trafficking? Fears grow for Uganda's 'orphans'
By Amy Fallon
October 5, 2015 12:23 AM


Mpigi (Uganda) (AFP) - When Agatha Namusisi, 64, let her grandson leave Uganda for medical treatment abroad, she assumed he would return, but more than a year later she says he has disappeared.

"They are nowhere to be seen," Namusisi said of the seven-year-old boy and his Ugandan carer who travelled together to the United States in May last year, after an Arizona-based Christian charity arranged for surgery to correct his crippling spinal deformity.

The case is just one example of international adoption gone wrong through misunderstanding, negligence or even criminality, a trend that has Ugandan lawmakers worried, with a 400 percent increase in orphans going to the US alone between 2006 and 2013.

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"I signed papers I could not read, but I knew they were to help get this boy from here to America for treatment," said Namusisi.

In Uganda, there is no word for "adoption" in the Western sense, implying permanence. Rather, sending children abroad is seen as similar to enrolling them at boarding school or an apprenticeship.

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In May, Uganda's parliament debated the "dubious circumstances" in which "hundreds" of children leave the country despite an estimated 80 percent of so-called orphans having living relatives and the existence of a domestic adoption programme.

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In failing to properly scrutinise such agencies, "Americans adopting from Uganda are now complicit in corruption and unethical practices" said one children's rights activist.

~more @ link~
http://news.yahoo.com/adoption-trafficking-fears-grow-ugandas-orphans-042323746.html

I read a story a while ago about a couple who was going to adopt from Africa became suspicious of the officials handling the adoption and chose not to adopt. Ethics. Some people have them.