ONE IN EVERY 13 children in the developing world today is an orphan, says Unicef. That is 143 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Ethiopia alone has five million, who cost more than is spent each year on health or education. And it isn’t just a black and brown issue: more than a million children in Europe and Central Asia live in residential institutions. Including thousands in Britain.
And among all these millions of children is one, David Banda, whom Madonna is seeking to adopt. (Unicef defines orphans in the developing world as those who have lost one or both parents.) Throw up your hands in horror at the ghastly sight of a celebrity — a celebrity, her with all her millions, ooh! — going shopping in Africa for a cute little boy.
How anybody can seriously argue that David Banda and millions like him can be better served by remaining in understaffed institutions in impoverished countries, with little hope of a decent education, than by being in loving homes elsewhere, famous or not, wealthy or not, makes me want to puke. Admittedly David’s case is complicated because he has a father living, but remember this is a father who wasn’t taking care of him, who sent him to an orphanage and wants Madonna to adopt him.
What has happened with David Banda shows how hard it can be, whether you are Madonna or not, to fight through the network of domestic and international regulation, vested interest and personal profiteering that governs intercountry adoption. It demonstrates why there are 143 million orphans. Just listen to the vague protests of local children’s and human rights groups in Malawi that some rules were not followed, or they could look after David better over there because they are better at loving.
This kind of cultural pride might have been relevant a century ago, when populations were smaller, food more abundant, and the world a very big place without aeroplanes or telly, but it is a vicious trap today. It ensnares millions of children in loneliness and poverty because of the dual inability of the international community to take responsibility and of the local community to get real.
First, let’s get real. These countries cannot afford to care for their orphans as comfortably as families in the West. And to suggest that would-be adopters “support” a child in Malawi instead? Families are not going to lavish the same amount of care and money on children they barely know as they are a child they love and raise in their own homes; suggesting that wealthier families should somehow “pay for” them instead of adopting them is silly. What do they pay for first, anyway? A bigger home? Some shoes? Education? A goat? A new orphanage? All of it? And the rest of the village? And when the drought comes and the goat dies, do they travel over with some water and a food parcel? Get real. Anyway, in many countries with plummeting life expectancy there are simply too many children and not enough adults to give them the care they need.
The international community has responded to this global crisis with depressing lumpenness and a barrage of regulations all underpinned by the inadequate presumption that orphans should and therefore can be adequately cared for in their home countries. This, with the domestic requirements on adoption, creates a network of demands that are quite impossible to negotiate. A flowchart provided by the Department of Health to show the intercountry adoption process runs to three pages, with up to 17 separate stages on each page. “Central authority ensures proper procedures were followed and, where necessary seeks and obtains additional information”; “once central authority satisfied, issues certificate of eligibility and suitability and sends documents (including Article 15 report) to State of origin” . . . And so on and on and on.
It is mind-numbing, exhausting and depressing. And that was just a few hours’ research trying to extract information from official websites. No wonder relatively few people see it through; there are just 320 or so international adoptions in Britain each year.
The interests of the child that are supposedly paramount are in fact smothered in the red tape spun out by people terrified of taking responsibility for a decision. I know people who have tried to adopt within the UK and almost had marriages destroyed by the bureaucracy and bullying from social services that they had to live with for years before being given the go-ahead. Intercountry adoption requires another ten leaps as well.
Why the need for all this? Take an existing family; ask the children’s headteacher if they are good parents and could cope with another child; ensure they have a roof over their heads; medical check; let them do it. It shouldn’t be much more complicated than that. First-time parent? Financial and criminal record check as well, personal and professional references, perhaps a psychological assessment. How long can that take? You do not need to know every spit and cough of a family’s finances, past relationships, future living arrangements, to know that they are suitable to adopt.
To hear the sneering about adoption, one would think that there was something selfish about it, as opposed to what I suppose is meant to be the pure selflessness of bearing one’s own child. A massive global effort is needed to encourage, not discourage, international adoptions. A child adopted overseas today has all the opportunity in the world to learn about his or her home country, on the internet and television; to keep in touch, even to visit and perhaps one day to return and help it. And why can we not twin country to country, or region to region, even town to town? Imagine whole migrations of children to countries and places linked with their countries and places, welcoming them and committed to maintaining that link.
Would that Madonna would lead a worldwide effort to kick it off. Would that David Banda were just the start.
