Parliament cancels moratorium on adoptions, sets procedures

by Marta Kolomayets
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The Parliament on January 30 lifted a moratorium on adoption of Ukrainian children by foreigners and voted to establish a new centralized monitoring agency that will require all adoptions in Ukraine to pass through the country's court system. The Parliament's action is an attempt to regulate adoptions, which had started to become a booming illegal business after Ukraine declared independence in 1991.

The new adoption law gives Ukrainian citizens priority in adopting Ukrainian children, maintains that children adopted by foreigners remain Ukrainian citizens until age 18, keeps tabs on all Ukrainian children adopted by foreigners through Ukrainian consular services until they turn 18 and forbids any commercial foreign intermediaries to take part in the adoption process.

The law, which takes effect April 1, will closely scrutinize the fate and whereabouts of Ukraine's most precious resource - its children. It ends the 18-month ban on adoptions by foreigners imposed in July 1994 because of Ukraine's lack of laws regulating such procedures.

Monitoring will be done by a new government watchdog organization, which will be created within Ukraine's Ministry of Education and based in Kyiv.

Deputies from the working group setting up this system pledge that it will not be a bureaucratic web, but a simple computer data bank that will keep records of Ukrainian orphans and prospective parents from Ukraine and abroad.

"We wrote this law first and foremost in the interests of our children," said Nina Karpachova, deputy chair of the Parliament's Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and International Relations, whose working group spent close to a year fine-tuning the adoption law before presenting it for approval in Ukraine's Supreme Council. "The orphans are wards of the state. Where can they turn if not to the state for protection?" she added.

The legislature voted 260-13 to approve "Amendments and Supplements to the Code on Marriage and Family." Most of the changes concerned restructuring and creating the mechanism involved in the sensitive issue of adoption (Articles 101-199), while a few modifications in the code (Articles 33, 82-97) included an increase in child- support payments.

All of the amendments were passed in the second reading of this law after almost a full day of debates, during which lawmakers listened to Ms. Karpachova explain the additions and corrections to the code.

Deputy Procurator General Viktor Tanciura informed the Supreme Council of the numerous violations regarding foreign adoption of Ukrainian children over the past four years - due to the absence of codified procedures. He provided horrific facts concerning the way children were adopted - without legal papers, in exchange for monetary gifts to individuals, including government officials in Ukraine.

Children as "goods"

According to a report prepared back in 1994 by the Procurator General's office and read by Mr. Tanciura on January 30: "Ukrainian children were convenient 'goods' for swindlers and organizations , with questionable reputations, because according to reports from various visitors to the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States, some foreign adoption facilitators would charge tens of thousands of dollars - some of which was used for bribes, in order to get genetically and physically healthy children out of Ukraine."

Another report presented by Mr. Tanciura examined the illegal actions of Lviv doctors who sold babies to Westerners in 1993-1994. An investigation into these cases is currently under way, and three doctors who were arrested in February 1994 in connection with this illicit baby-trading have been further detained until August 1996.

A group of Lviv prosecutors is scheduled to leave for the United States in the near future. Deputies approved a proposal by Ms. Karpachova that another investigating team composed of Parliament deputies be formed to join forces with the Office of the Procurator General in order to get answers to a number of questions regarding the illegal adoption of Lviv babies and put an end to this matter once and for all.

During her parliamentary presentation on January 30. Ms. Karpachova disclosed the uncontrolled and fast-growing rise in foreign adoptions in 1993 and 1994, which in the end forced the Parliament to b an adoptions of Ukrainian children. "Whereas in 1990, only two children were adopted by foreigners, in 1993 the numbers had risen to 392," she said. (In 1991, eight kids were adopted by foreigners, in 1992 that number rose to 97 and in the first six months of 1994, orphans adopted by foreigners totaled 203).

From 1990 through July 1994, when the moratorium was imposed, 802 children had been shipped out of Ukraine. Today, Ukrainian authorities do not know the whereabouts of 631 legally adopted children.

Cabinet unaware of true situation

Ms. Karpachova also revealed that often the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers did not know what was going on with orphans in the country. She noted that when the first reading of the law was presented in Parliament last year (after the moratorium had been in effect) government statistics reported that only 447 had been adopted by foreigners. But, Ms. Karpachova and her committee found, through their own investigation, that the numbers were almost double - 802.

Despite the fact that Ukrainian law allows a mother who gives up her baby six months to change her mind, Ms. Karpachova cited cases of newborns two-day-olds, five-day-olds and 10-day-olds - disappearing from maternity wards and hospitals, never to be seen again.

She highlighted the Lviv baby scandal, citing 31 documented cases. However, she also noted that her group's investigation documented much of the same in the Odessa region (18 infants).

Ms. Karpachova noted that her group had uncovered 18 foreign commercial adoption agencies or "facilitators," who helped in transporting Ukrainian children out of Ukraine.

"As a result, in Ukraine we had an interesting situation: Ukrainian families who wished to adopt orphans - and those numbers have doubled in the last few years - were put on a waiting list for five to six years, while foreigners were adopting babies in a few months' time," she told deputies.

"The protection of the gene pool is of critical importance in Ukraine, considering worsening demographics and the 1986 Chornobyl disaster," she said.

Though Ukraine is economically depressed at this time, Ms. Karpachova noted that the majority of Ukraine's million infertile couples have expressed a desire to adopt Ukrainian children. She said that Ukrainian citizens from the Zhytomyr and Dnipropetrovske regions, and the city of Sevastopil have had the longest wait - some over six years - to adopt children.

"The year-and-a-half-long moratorium on foreign adoptions imposed by our Parliament was unprecedented in world practice as a means to resolve this problem. Indeed, it left many orphans unattended," explained Ms. Karpachova, who added that she was not a supporter of the moratorium when it was declared in 1994.

"I knew that this temporary ban would not be a solution to our problems, concerning not only foreign adoptions, but adoptions by Ukrainian citizens as well. Our working group understood that in issues of adoption, permanent laws to monitor adoptions, keep data banks, etc. would have to be endorsed."

Some new adoption procedures

According to Ms. Karpachova, the new law is good news for prospective parents both in Ukraine and abroad.

"Of course, Ukrainians have the prerogative in adopting Ukrainian children," noted Ms. Karpachova, but when a home for children is not found in Ukraine, then the alternative is adoption by foreigners.

"We are not depriving foreigners of the right to adopt Ukrainian children," Ms. Karpachova told a press conference on January 30. "Indeed, we are trying to adhere to the International Convention on the Rights of Children," ratified by Ukraine in 1991.

Among the list of countries whose citizens can adopt Ukrainian children are those which have signed bilateral agreements with Ukraine (most states have done so). However, she told reporters during a press conference that citizens of countries that have agreements with Ukraine concerning family and adoption matters would be first on the list as prospective parents (after Ukrainian citizens).

The next day she told The Weekly that the United States, Italy, Israel and Canada over the last four years had adopted the most Ukrainian children (471, 155, 70 and 43, respectively), and none of them have family and adoption agreements signed with Ukraine.

"And such documents will be necessary, either on an inter-state, inter-government or inter-ministry level, if citizens of these countries want to adopt Ukrainian children legally," she noted, adding that her parliamentary committee had already forwarded such information to Ukraine's ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice. (Ms. Karpachova was unavailable for further comment, and the issue will be interpreted in detail by April 1, when the law comes into power.)

According to the new provisions, children eligible for adoption are those whose parents have died, whose parents have been stripped of their parental rights or whose parents have given written consent for their adoption. If parents abandon their child in the hospital and do not claim it within two months of the baby's birth, the children can be given up for adoption. Birth parents cannot be coerced into giving up a child for adoption. No child can be given up for adoption before it is born.

Adult citizens of Ukraine, either married or single, can adopt children. Priority is given to family members of orphans and citizens of Ukraine. Others who are given priority are people who have already adopted a sibling, and people who already have an adopted child.

Adoption facilitators, or commercial agencies, are not allowed to take part in an adoption process, however, Ms. Karpachova explained, this does not include lawyers for the family or notary publics.

Data bank to list orphans

According to the new law, a data bank in Kyiv, which will be up and running within the next year, will collect the names and ages of orphans throughout Ukraine.

Citizens of Ukraine can submit their names and requests for adopting an orphan; they will be matched up with available children. Appropriate papers must then be filed on the basis of which Ukrainian courts will then grant custody.

In the case of foreigners who want to adopt, the, too, will be put into a data bank; according to Ms. Karpachova, their adoption process may take up to a year. They can submit their requests to the data bank, and will be informed by the Ukrainian government when a child becomes available. Then, the prospective parents must travel to Ukraine to submit documents and meet their future child. Prospective parents should expect to spend up to a month in Ukraine when submitting documents, and they must appear in person for the court hearing.

Basically, the difference between Ukrainian citizens and foreigners adopting Ukrainian children is the time frame involved. No newborns will be allowed to leave the country, and the process may take up to a year from the actual date of a request's filing. Also, while Ukrainian citizens who adopt children may wish to seal the child's birth record, adoptions by foreigner will always be a matter of public record.

In cases where a foreigner is married to a Ukrainian citizen, an adoption will be treated as an adoption by a Ukrainian citizen.

Those foreigners who began the adoption process before the moratorium, said Ms. Karpachova, may be regarded as special cases in Ukraine. She also said the cases of the Ternopil children who now live in Chicago also would be re-examined. This time, "however, they will not be reviewed as a list of names. Each case will be reviewed individually, because now four years have passed, and I'm sure many have found their fate - happiness in a family circle," said the lawmaker.

"But, I think the organizers of this trip in 1992 should be held criminally accountable," she added. "Every child has the right to embrace a family. This is critical. And our parliamentary Committee on Human Rights regards the protection of the rights of a child to be of the utmost importance," she concluded.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 4, 1996, No. 5, Vol. LXIV

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