NEW YORK, January 30, 2012 — Last Monday the government of Kyrgyzstan announced it would be issuing a permit to process adoptions to a U.S.-based agency, Christian World Adoptions. This is good news for the future of inter-country adoption.
International adoptions were suspended back in 2009 by Kyrgyz Prime Minister Igor Chudinov amid allegations of corruption, abuse and confusion. He announced that the country needed time to study the issue and put safeguards into place to better regulate inter-country adoptions.
Prior to the shutdown, the number of Americans adopting from Kyrgyzstan had been rising steadily since 2004. Nine U.S.-based agencies were working to process adoptions in the country.
The program was largely seen — at least on the American side — as a positive one. It was a relatively streamlined process with a waiting time of about one year.
However, there had been mounting unease among aid organizations and some officials inside Kyrgyzstan, who believed that a handful of unscrupulous actors were manipulating the system to gain lucrative payouts.
One of the most serious fallouts of this was 65 American families who had been matched with children in Kyrgyz orphanages were thrown into limbo. When the inter-country adoption program was put into a moratorium, the children, many of them with special needs, languished in Kyrgyz orphanages without the care of families while the government investigated the issues that led to the suspension.
That was then. This is now. The hope is that the permit that Kyrgyz government issued to Christian World Adoptions will be the first of more to come, which will enable American families to adopt orphans from Kyrgyzstan.
Although it has taken a couple of years, this development is an exciting one for those watching the landscape of international adoption. The Kyrgyz government worked with some speed to put into place new regulations. As other countries around the world struggle with ways to move forward with inter-country adoption, Kyrgyzstan’s relative efficiency can serve as a model.
Last Monday’s announcement is especially heartening in light of the otherwise bleak outlook for orphans around the world, who are waiting for reforms and international agreements to be expedited so that they can join families.
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