Intercountry adoption, final thoughts

(Part 3 of a 3-part IntLawGrrls guest contribution, an interdisciplinary conversation on intercountry adoptions between Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin and Dr. Patricia Y. Jones. Part 1 discussed the case of Justin Hansen, the adoptive child who was sent back to Russia by his American adoptive mother. Part 2 considered the case of a boy arrested with guns at his Minnesota school).
Michele: Each year, over 1,500 Russian children can be expected to be brought into American homes. Generally, this process will cost Americans upwards of $30,000 per child. Some critics point out that it would be far less expensive to adopt children from less exotic locations, like Detroit and Milwaukee, than from abroad. Such concerns usually hint at race, as most children in foster care are black, and studies show that whites would prefer to adopt from abroad or adopt a child with severe disabilities than to adopt a black child.
Patricia: There are a number of reasons why this may be the case.
Many people would simply prefer to adopt a child who looks like they could be a part of their family. Some people are understandably uneasy about navigating the social waters that come with having a child that obviously might not be their genetically related child. That discomfort is part of the price of living in a racially polarized nation.
Perhaps the National Association of Black Social Workers has succeeded in identifying the skill sets and social capacities white parents would need in order to adopt a black child in America. Many white families may not be willing to change their customary social functioning to accommodate a black child. Children bring change -- even when they are your own biological children. Adopting transnationally also requires developing new skill sets, and perhaps making social changes in a family’s usual social network. Just because the Russian children share the same complexion as their prospective parents does not make this any less a cross-cultural adoption. This is especially critical when adopting older children.
Michele: But there are also some issues that policy makers and those interested in transnational adoptions would be wise to address, particularly given the profit motivations and financial incentives at play in international adoptions. Transnational adoptions are now a growing cottage industry. Each year the number of international adoptions by Americans increases -- despite language barriers, cultural differences, and financial costs.
Americans lead the world in adopting from abroad. Given what Americans are willing to spend financially, and expend emotionally, some agencies with less altruistic motivations have entered the adoption marketplace. In the worst cases, children not available for adoption, because they have families or were not sent to an orphanage, end up being sent to the United States. Some of these matters could be more easily dealt with when there are no language barriers. But given the significant number of adoptions from Korea, Ethiopia, China, Russia, Guatemala, and other countries where English is not spoken, the challenges become more obvious on inspection.
Patricia: The transnational adoption world would change dramatically if prospective parents were required to have conversational knowledge of the child’s primary language. Many of the abuses by those trafficking in children would stop if they knew prospective parents would be able to converse with their prospective children from another country.
Having a shared language would seem to be the rudimentary platform for which parenting a child from another country can begin. Children with a primary language are routinely placed in homes with parents who cannot communicate with them and unfortunately with parents who also have no desire to learn the child’s primary language. That is absurd.
Michele: The tales of Justin Hansen and Joey Jarvis are yet to fully unfold. Joey, the 14 year old on whose case we posted yesterday, is now in juvenile detention awaiting a decision from prosecutors as to whether he will be charged as an adult from threatening to kill his classmates and teachers. And as for 7 year old Justin, about whom we posted earlier. He has returned to his native country after an unsuccessful adoption by a woman who likely wishes that she had been better prepared for the challenges of adoption.
Exposed, however, are the weaknesses in the intercountry adoption system. Follow-up support is not always available. And support groups are not always local; rather, they are spread across the country (and world).

Intercountry adoption, a 2d snapshot

(Part 2 of a 3-part IntLawGrrls guest contribution, an interdisciplinary conversation on intercountry adoptions between Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin and Dr. Patricia Y. Jones. Part 1, which discussed the case of Justin Hansen, the adoptive child who was sent back to Russia by his American adoptive mother, is here. Part 3 is still to come.)

Michele: Only a few days before Justin Hansen’s untimely departure from a Washington, D.C., airport, another Russian boy, Joey Jarvis, age 14, was placed into police custody in Hastings, Minnesota, after threatening to kill his classmates and teachers at Hastings Middle School. (image credit) Although twice the age of Justin, he too had been returned by his adoptive parents. Only they did not send him back to Russia -- they gave him to the State of Minnesota last year.

This past April 5, Joey, who had been adopted from a Russian orphanage when he was 3 years old, set off to school with a gun, bullets, and rage. According to police, no one was shot because the bullets were the wrong size. But that did not stop Joey from breaking windows and attempting to break into classrooms -- where his classmates and teachers waited in fear, hoping for the police to arrive.

His adoptive parents, whose names have not been released for their safety, tried to warn state officials about Joey’s violent tendencies, his threats to cut family members into “tiny pieces,” and other antisocial behavior, including an effort to taint drinks with rat poison. Unlike the Hansens’, Joey’s parents did try therapy -- and lots of it -- before giving up.

Patricia: Theirs is a story of parents who appeared to try to go the distance with their adopted child. While they had some clues even at age 3 that this child might have severe emotional problems, because they were not mental health professionals they probably were not attuned to what these signs meant and the possible severity.

Once a child, especially a teenager, is a clear danger to himself and others, then the parents have to remove the child for the safety of their other children and themselves. They exhausted their healthcare benefits trying to get this child psychiatric help. After their insurance was exhausted, their only choice was to give him to the state so that he could continue to get help. The state was not a better parent for this child. His documented medical background and psychiatric history were essentially ignored, and the child welfare system placed Joey in another home. A large number of people give up their biological children to the state -- which essentially means the child is placed in child welfare or the juvenile delinquency system. Of those children relinquished to the state, a disproportionate number of the cases involve adopted children.

Michele: The journeys of Joey Jarvis and Justin Hansen are two snapshots, and do not paint the full picture of American adoptions from Russia, or from abroad generally. Many international adoptions help satisfy the need for American adults who want to parent, and provide children with healthier homes and living environments than they would have had at Russian orphanages. The stories of these two boys help to elevate awareness of the need for a sustained contemporary conversation about international and local adoptions -- and specifically, for urgent examination of the quality of care children receive in group homes, orphanages, and other living situations, including within families.

Guest Bloggers: Michele Bratcher Goodwin & Patricia Y. Jones

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Michele Bratcher Goodwin (right) and Dr. Patricia Y. Jones (left) as guest bloggers. Beginning today, they contribute an interdisciplinary conversation (here are Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) on intercountry adoptions.
► Michele, the Everett Fraser Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota, holds joint appointments at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her courses include Biotechnology Law, Genetic Property and the Law, Health Law Policy, Health Law Regulations, Law and Education, Legal Ethics, Mental Health Law, and Torts. She is a leading voice in the debates on socioeconomics and race in medicine, having founded the country's 1st center for studying race and bioethics.
Michele's served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley, and was honored with a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Griffith University in Australia. Prior to law teaching Michele -- who earned her J.D. degree at Boston College Law school and holds B.A. and LL.M. degrees from the University of Wisconsin -- was a Gilder-Lehrman postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
Notable among Michele's many publications is her scholarship on organ transplant policy. Urging a broader reconciliation of the legal treatments of women with differing social statuses, she's helped redefine evaluation of reproductive technology policy. In addition to the forthcoming book Biotechnology and Bioethics, she's the author of Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Human Body Parts (2006), published in Portuguese translation in 2008. The new collection she edited, Baby Markets: Money and the Politics of Creating Families (2010) (right), contains essays by Michele and others, among them IntLawGrrl Naomi Cahn, guest/alumna Michelle Olbermann, and my California-Davis colleague Lisa C. Ikemoto. Michele also co-edited Imagining, Writing, (Re)Reading the Black Body (2009).
Among her many professional achievements, Michele is the former Secretary General of the International Academy of Law & Mental Health and Past Chair of the Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care of the American Association of Law Schools. She's received the Black Pearl Award and the Chicago History Museum’s Pioneering Women Award, and been commissioned a Kentucky Colonel.
► Patricia, a licensed clinical psychologist based in Chicago, has over twenty five years of experience as a clinician and administrator of mental health programs. She's a member of the Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.
Her vocational experience encompasses an array of clinical settings: public and private, profit and not-for-profit, and academic institutions. Consistent is her focus on access to and development of appropriate mental health care for children and their families. She has specific interests in applied psychological practice with culturally diverse populations, in interpersonal violence with concomitant post-traumatic stress disorders, and in child abuse. Patricia provides consultation and/or clinical supervision to administrative and program staff who serve a diverse population within a wide variety of social service organizations; especially, to Child Protective Services across the United States.

Patricia earned her B.S. degree in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University, and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Heartfelt welcome!

Intercountry adoptions, a conversation

(Part 1 of a 3-part IntLawGrrls guest contribution, an interdisciplinary conversation on intercountry adoptions between Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin and Dr. Patricia Y. Jones. Inspired by a recent news story, it follows the publication this February of a book Michele edited, Baby Markets: Money and the New of Creating Families)
United States and Russian officials have been discussing what to do about U.S. adoptions from Russia. The meetings come on the heel of the story that Justin Hansen, a 7-year-old Russian boy, was sent back to Russia by his adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, a nurse from Tennessee. While most of the attention in the case has focused on her behavior, little has been explored about the complex issues associated with Russian adoptions.
Russia and former Soviet bloc countries have been a draw for Americans. Couples from the United States adopt more Russian children than any other nation.

But this story made headline news because of a controversial, and rather unorthodox decision made by his adoptive mother, along with his adoptive grandmother: They sent him back to Russia, with an “unaccompanied minor” ticket and a note. Their personal decision has become the subject of international policy and adoption politics, drawing significant scrutiny to international adoptions, and raising questions as to why Americans pass over plenty of children available for adoption in the United States. Critics and child advocacy groups wonder why the women did not try harder.

We endeavor here to discuss the underlying issues.

Patricia: It’s reported that the adoptive mother only had “Justin” in her home for six months. That's hardly enough time for either parent or child to get beyond any adjustment issues to a new home, family and culture. While we don’t know the full story and what she did try, sending him back is another rejection, and one that can be psychologically traumatizing. There are so many messages in that: “You are unloveable,” “You are not wanted,” “You are not worth investing in.”

When we have biological children, we don’t know what we are going to get, and we don’t get to send them back. The hopeful aspiration is that the commitment to adopted children will be the same as one we would have to a biological child.

Michele: In their defense, the mother and daughter pair asserted that they tried everything in their power to integrate the child into his new American life -- including changing his name from Artyom, and giving him a loving home. But ultimately they feared for their safety. They allege that the adoption agency lied to them about his emotional and mental health. In the note sent with the child, the adoptive mother wrote:

'This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviors. I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues.'

Patricia: How would you (or your child) feel if you were taken to Russia? Given strange food, isolated from anyone who spoke your language? Told “you are lucky to be here” in a language you did not understand? And stripped of your name -- how was that understood by the child? A name is a source of identity and connection to culture. Stripping persons of their name is a means of culturally isolating them, and basically communicating that their culture or nationality is not acceptable. It was a common practice during slavery. While a loving home may have been the intent of these women, one could question the loving home premise. I am not sure the child felt loved; in fact his behavior suggests he was very unhappy and not adjusting. Because the adoptive mother did not know the child’s primary language, she was incapable of communicating with “Justin” about his discomfort.

As a psychologist, I am concerned that the mother was unfamiliar with her adoptive child’s native language. At 7 this is his primary language. A thorough assessment would have noted the language barrier as possibly interfering with the adequate parenting of this child. A good home assessment would also include some exploration of the parent’s familiarity with, affinity for, and capacity to affirm the child’s culture. The quality of preparation for prospective parents to adopt transnationally varies from agency to agency.
Michele: This case and others raise a number of urgent issues about international adoptions, including the:

► Exploitation of children,

► Vulnerability of adoptive parents,

► Market structure of adoptions, which incentivizes placements at all costs,

► Morality of “returning children” as if they are items from a store, and

► Lack of capacity for some adoptive parents to meet the challenges of raising children from different cultures.

(Still to come: Part 2 & Part 3)

Law alone is not enough: the global struggle for LGBT rights

Earlier this month I presented my article From Fretté to E.B.: The European Court of Human Rights on Gay and Lesbian Adoption at the Global Arc of Justice, a conference convened by the Williams Institute, the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association, and the City of West Hollywood. In it, I examine the legal and social changes in the six years between the cases of Fretté v. France (2002) and E.B. v. France (2008) that allowed the European Court of Human Rights to reach its result in the E.B. case, that is, that it is impermissible for member states to discriminate in the adoption process on the basis of sexual orientation. (Prior IntLawGrrls post.)
My take on the case is overwhelmingly positive. I suggest that the ECHR expanded the applicability of article 14 (the nondiscrimination provision of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) to the point of holding France, a nonsignatory, to the equality standards of Protocol 12. I also posit that that by privileging the right to a private life free from discrimination over the national interest in protecting children, the ECHR reduced the deference given to States when it reviews State laws that have a discriminatory effect on gays and lesbians.
It turns out that in the case of Ms. E.B., a lesbian woman wishing to adopt, that even with such a strong statement by the ECHR behind her, the result may not change in her case. In early March, it was reported that Ms. E.B.’s application to adopt has again been denied. The relevant department insists that the denial has nothing to do with her sexual orientation. Instead, they claim it is about the undefined role Ms. E.B.’s partner plays in the plan to have a child. This was identified as an issue by the department during Ms. E.B.’s first application, and resultantly when on appeal in the Nancy Court, it was stated that the denial of her application to adopt had nothing to do with her “choice of lifestyle.” (see E.B. v. France, § 24). Similarities aside, whether Ms. E.B. will be successful in again challenging this determination remains to be seen.
This sad bit of news underscored for me that too often in the case of LGBT rights, advances in the courts don’t always translate to wins on the ground. As we know from the example of the United States, court decisions favoring same-sex couples are frequently met with a legislative backlash that undoes the work of the litigation.
In the closing plenary of the conference, Paula L. Ettelbrick, Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, reminded the attorneys in attendance that our role as advocates in the global struggle for LGBT human rights is a complimentary one; legal changes must happen in conjunction with community-building and public education campaigns. I applaud her for this sentiment. While the law is of utmost importance and interest to me, as we see in the case of the struggle for LGBT rights, law alone is not enough.
Perhaps to state the obvious, the interplay of activism, media, and law is vital to creating change. Activism and media can shape attitudes and stop such brutal attacks as recently seen in Colombia, the United States, and South Africa, before they happen. Activists can also work to educate about the rights of LGBT partnerships and parenting, so that individuals like Ms. E.B. don’t continue to be denied their rights under thinly veiled pretenses. Lawyers can pick up the pieces and work for change in the aftermath of such incidents – but they can also preemptively develop the soft law that is used symbolically by governments and activists alike, as in the example of the Yogyakarta Principles and the UN Statement on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity (which the U.S. just endorsed, about which IntLawGrrls has posted here and here).
Yet I think this concept is often not obvious, as those working on LGBT issues tend to operate in their specific sphere of expertise -- and think locally and regionally but rarely globally. This, to me, was the greatest value of the Global Arc of Justice conference. It brought together lawyers, judges, scholars, activists, and other interested people with an incredibly diverse set of perspectives and experiences, yet all with the common goal of LGBT equality. As I discovered, such a check-in with one another is a wonderful reminder that human rights work does not happen in a vacuum, and that such a meeting can be an incredible resource for developing more nuanced strategies to change our world.
If only it happened more than once every four years.

On May 10

On this day in ...
... 1995, in Canada, a court in Ontario gave a lesbian couple the right to adopt children. The women, each of whom wanted to adopt the biological child to which the other had given birth, successfully invoked the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to challenge a law limiting the right to joint adoption to opposite-sex couples.
... 1933 (75 years ago today), in "[a]n event unseen since the Middle Ages," as one website puts it, "German students from universities formerly regarded as among the finest in the world, gather[ed] in Berlin and other German cities to burn books with un-German' ideas. Books by Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Jack London, H.G. Wells and many others" succumbed to fire as participants gave "the Nazi salute" (right).

For Zoe's Ark 6, 8 years in a French prison

The 6 French nationals convicted in Chad of trying to kidnap to Europe more than a hundred children they said were Darfurian orphans -- but who, as we've posted, were in fact Chadian children with families -- received "substitute" sentences from a French judge today.
A Chadian court had sentenced Zoe's Ark workers Eric Breteau, Emilie Lelouch, Alain Péligat, Philippe van Winkelberg, Dominique Aubry, and Nadia Merimi to 8 years of forced labor. They were then transferred, pursuant to a France-Chad treaty signed in 1976, back to Paris. There le tribunal correctionnel de Créteil gave them, as a substitute, 8 years in French prison. The court did not seem to have been moved by defense counsel's argument "stigmatizing" the Chadian judgment as having been "produced by a 'totalitarian' country."

Path to adoption eased in Europe

By a 10-7 margin the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that France's refusal to permit a lesbian from adopting a child violated Europe's Convention on Human Rights.
E.B., a teacher in France's national nursery school system, had been in a longterm relationship with R, a psychologist. After the Conseil d'Etat refused to grant E.B. an authorization to adopt -- France reasoned that the child would suffer from lack of a "paternal referent," E.B. sought relief from the ECHR.
The Court ordered France to pay E.B. 10,000€ plus 14,528€ for court costs, finding violations of 2 provisions of the Convention, which is binding on all 47 member states of the Council of Europe:
► Article 8, freedom of interference with private and family life. On this, the Court wrote in ¶ 43 (citations omitted) that it had

previously held that the notion of “private life” ... is a broad concept which encompasses, inter alia, the right to establish and develop relationships with other human beings, the right to “personal development” or the right to self-determination as such. It encompasses elements such as names, gender identification, sexual orientation and sexual life, which fall within the personal sphere..., and the right to respect for both the decisions to have and not to have a child.

► Article 14, freedom from discrimination -- this was held to apply even though the provision does not explicitly protect individuals from discrimination on account of sexual orientation.
Voting with the majority in favor of E.B. were Judges: Nicolas Bratza, ECHR Vice President (Britain); Peer Lorenzen (Denmark); Françoise Tulkens (Belgium); Ireneu Cabral Barreto (Portugal); Elisabeth Steiner (Austria); Elisabet Fura-Sandström (Sweden); Egbert Myjer (Netherlands); Dragoljub Popović (Serbia); and Sverre Erik Jebens (Norway). Dissenting were Judges: Jean-Paul Costa, ECHR President (France); Boštjan Zupančič (Slovenia); Loukis Loucaides (Cyprus); Antonella Mularoni (San Marino); Riza Türmen (Turkey); Mindia Ugrekhelidze (Georgia); and Danutė Jočienė (Lithuania).
Even as a spokesman for France's Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents (logo on balloon in photo) rejoiced that "'homosexuals would no longer have to hide themselves in order to adopt,'" gays and lesbians in Belgium warned against premature celebration. Le Monde reported: "Their reservations can be explained by a stark observation: in their country, where homosexuals have not only the right to marry but also, since May 2006, to adopt, not one couple has managed to open a file for international adoption. Belgium's 2006 law, they said, is an "'empty vessel.'"

Zoe's Ark crew home, but not free

Half a world way from the Adelaide prison where David Hicks went free yesterday (see above), 6 French nationals arrived in Paris to serve sentences they'd received earlier in the week in Chad.
As we've posted, the 6 workers for L'Arche de Zoé (Zoe's Ark), and were arrested in October as they tried to leave Chad with 103 children who they claimed were Darfurian orphans destined for adoption in Europe. The children turned out, however, be Chadian non-orphans.
The 6 workers were convicted and sentenced to 8 years' hard labor. (A Sudanese and Chadian convicted of complicity remained in Chad.) The sentences of the 6 are expected to be "adjusted" in France, which also may open its own investigation into the incident.
As for the children, they remain in orphanages in Chad, and have yet to be reunited with their families.

"Zoe's Ark" update

The 18 persons arrested after trying to fly from Chad to France with more than 100 children -- mostly Chadians with at least 1 living parent, but whom the arrestees claimed were orphans from Darfur (posts here) -- appeared this week before a Chadian investigating judge. Although allegations against many were dropped, charges against the 6 French nationals of the organization known as L'Arche de Zoé, or Zoe's Ark, were retained and, indeed, expanded, so that now they include:
► kidnapping of minors with an eye to compromising their civil status
► 2 types of fraud
► false writings
2 others are charged with complicity; all defendants, some of whom now are on hunger strike, face up to 20 years' forced labor if convicted.

Child Abduction in Chad - Are the Prospective Adopters Morally Liable?

Further to Diane’s post here, nine people have now been charged with child abduction and fraud in respect of the operations of ‘Zoe’s Arc’ along the Chadian border (RTE News). Those nine are French nationals and Spanish crew members of the plane that was to fly the 103 children to Europe are also charged as accessories to the alleged crime. If it is found that this organization was, in effect, trafficking children to Europe for the purposes of adoption by families there who had each paid in the region of 2000 Euro then this raises – once more – the manner in which children are quickly becoming one of the most alarming commodities in Europe.

The trafficking of children from Africa for the purposes of sexual slavery and pornography is already well documented, but trafficking for the purposes of adoption and – as it seems likely also happens – organ harvesting is now becoming more prominent. In the case of adoption, at least, it is interesting to consider what the liability of those families who had intended to try to adopt these children would be – would it matter whether they knew that at least some of the children would appear not to actually be orphans but to be children who were separated from their families and could be reunified by the ICRC or similar agencies in the future? Would it, indeed, matter to their liability if they were aware that adoption is unlawful in both Chad and Darfur and therefore there would not seem to have been a domestic legal basis for the activities of the organization even if – as we must reasonably assume until such time as we are shown otherwise – they were acting bona fide?

The case, therefore, raises not only questions as to the impact of the proliferation of ‘NGOs’ on populations in the areas in which they operate, but also about the moral and legal liabilities of those who support these NGOs either financially or, in a case like this, by means of providing the ‘market’ for their work.

Abduction, adoption, and international law

Still in custody: 9 French citizens "wearing T-shirts with the slogan 'Children Rescue'" and 7 Spanish plane crewmembers in flight suits. The 16 were seized Thursday as they were readying to fly from Abéché, near Chad's border with the Darfur region of Sudan, to an airport near Rheims, France. With them at the time of arrest were 103 children, all under 9 years old.
The French detainees are affiliated with l'Arche de Zoé (Zoe's Ark). That NGO, whose website's a call to alarm over Darfur, maintained that the children were the 1st of 1,000 young refugees whom it planned to take away from the conflict in Darfur so that they might live with families in Europe that'd "each paid about €1,400 for the right to care for the children," according to London's Times; the International Herald Tribune put the amount at "€2,400, or nearly $3,500, per child."
The Times called it a "fiasco"; that seems a mild way to describe the operation, attempted just days before peace talks on Darfur were about to begin. (The talks began yesterday with Sudan's declaration of a unilateral ceasefire.) Chad's President, Idriss Deby, called it "a kidnapping, pure and simple," and promised severe punishment. French Minister for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Rama Yade (left) called the operation "illegal and irresponsible," stating that back in July all NGOs working in Darfur with whom she met agreed unanimously to condemn the operation. Laws on children and immigration were not followed; indeed, adoption's not even legal in Sudan and Chad. Not all the children may be from Darfur; some may be Chadians. And based on initial interviews with the children themselves, said Jacques Hintzy, President of UNICEF-France, not all in fact are orphans.
As international organizations and national governments registered denunciations, the children remained in limbo in Chad, receiving temporary care from UNICEF, the International Red Cross, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Rather than a peculiar event without ramification much beyond its facts, this was, according to a U.N. release, "not an isolated incident but one that was highly visible because of the size of the group of children." Problems have arisen across the globe, not only in African countries, but also in, for example, Cambodia and Guatemala. As might be expected, there's a treaty designed to avoid some of those problems. The Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption -- commonly called the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption (logo at right) -- was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1995. Yet today less than 1/3 of the world's countries are states parties, and many of the states that have experienced problems are nonparties. The United States signed but hasn't ratified, though it passed legislation in 2000 aimed at implementing some of the treaty's provisions.
It'll require many more ratifications, and much more enforcement, before this international law has the desired effect.