Kyrgyz Parliament Reveals Adoption Scandal
Officials arranged foreign adoptions for cash, commission finds.
Kyrgyz Parliament Reveals Adoption Scandal
Officials arranged foreign adoptions for cash, commission finds.
Following a parliamentary report which found that children in Kyrgyzstan were being illegally adopted by foreigners, prosecutors in Kyrgyzstan are expected to complete a review of more than 200 adoption cases next month.
Prosecutor General Elmurza Satybaldiev says his office is looking into 36 criminal cases concerning adoptions and another 200 civil-law cases.
Meanwhile, the findings of a special parliamentary commission set up to look into foreign adoptions may lead to officials and even members of the judiciary facing prosecution.
Rights activists say the commission’s work highlights the need for better, more comprehensive legislation to protect children in care.
The special commission uncovered a web of deceit and corruption that allowed children to be shipped abroad. The going rate was 36,000 US dollars, of which staff at the various institutions involved would take a cut.
The head of the commission, Nikolai Bailo, says staff at the education ministry took bribes from foreigners to facilitate the process. “They had an obvious interest in doing so,” he added.
Commenting on these cases, chief prosecutor Satybaldiev spoke of a chain of perpetrators including “childcare agencies in district government offices, the judges who ruled on cases, and the intermediaries”.
“There was corruption everywhere,” he added.
According to the commission’s report, “care and guardianship institutions, local government, and the head doctors at children’s homes have an evident interest in accelerating the process of resolving issues [in favour] of the foreign firms empowered to act on behalf of the adopting parents.”
One favoured method, according to the commission, was to take a child in care and forge documentation to record some medical problem which would make them more eligible for adoption.
Under the current law, a foreign national can adopt a child only if no adoptive or foster parent or other guardian can be found within the country. In practice, this has meant children with serious medical conditions requiring costly treatment – a loophole that seems to have been abused.
In one case, a child was given a clean bill of health by a medical commission at the Osh regional hospital as a prelude to being placed in a children’s home. Once there, however, the child was given a new medical record by the resident doctor diagnosing anaemia and an internal infection
The parliamentarians found that children’s homes in Bishkek and Tokmok as well as Osh – a wide geographical area – had engaged in this fictitious diagnosis in order to fast-track their wards for adoption abroad.
In an interview with IWPR, Deputy Prime Minister Uktomkhan Abdullaeva said that since the rules were eased in 2005, 225 children had been adopted and taken abroad, mainly to the United States, Israel, France, Sweden and Italy.
For foreign nationals, the process begins with an application and accompanying documentation which go via the foreign ministry to the Ministry of Education and Science, which selects an appropriate child from those currently in care. A court then rules on whether the adoption can go ahead.
Until Kyrgyzstan introduced a code of family law in 2005, the legislative framework for adoption followed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and a government resolution concerning children without guardians. It was the government, not the courts, that had the final say in foreign adoption cases.
Kyrgyzstan has yet to ratify the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, which contains provisions on a child’s rights in cases of adoption from abroad. The Kyrgyz parliament is currently reviewing the issue with a view to ratification.
The 2005 law made the adoption process a lot simpler, although the findings of the parliamentary commission suggest the regulatory mechanisms became laxer.
Yelena Gavrilova of the League of Child Right Defenders in Kyrgyzstan says officials appear to be making up the rules as they go along.
“Every local government administration seems to be setting its own rules of the game. Each one has its own views on what kind of documentation needs to be submitted,” she said. “The adoption process is therefore not set down in stone in terms of legislation. Someone might have gathered all the right documents, but how is one to know whether the child will fare well in that family, how fit the prospective adoptive parents are – mentally and morally – to take on the role, or whether they’ve undertaken any kind of training course?”
Prime Minister Igor Chudinov recognises there is a problem, noting that it extends to domestic adoptions as well as foreign ones.
“New mechanisms are being drafted on the basis of the parliamentary commission’s work – first, to sign up to the relevant international conventions, and second, to resolve all matters relating to domestic procedures,” he told IWPR. “Unfortunately, we haven’t had clear mechanisms set down in law or in government regulatory instructions.”
In the cases revealed by the commission, Chudinov promised that “the guilty will be punished”.
Bailo says when it comes to blame, the education minister should be held responsible. “The rest will follow,” he added.
In practical term, the prosecution service has requested all the court rulings relating to foreign adoptions.
“They [prosecutors] are asking that a new deadline be set for prosecutors to appeal against these decisions, and are demanding that they be annulled,” said Janyl Alieva, chair of Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court.
This could result in calls for adopted children to be returned from abroad.
Ulukbek Aydarkulov, a lawyer practicing in the Adilet legal aid clinic, says that if the original court rulings permitting adoption are overturned, he says, “everything naturally has to be returned to how it was at the outset; in other words the children will have to be returned to their home country”.
However, judicial proceedings will take a long time to wind up because if any wrongdoing is found, there will still be an appeals process.
Meanwhile, “other circumstances may have arisen while the child is in the other country, so everything will be have to be examined on an individual basis”.
Chief prosecutor Satybaldiev says it is too early to be talking about successful prosecutions of offenders in the state system; this will come only after “the judiciary have reviewed our appeal claims against earlier court rulings”.
Judges who are found to have issued deliberately misleading rulings in foreign adoption cases could themselves face punishment.
“If there were clear breaches of the law, and if wrong decisions were issued knowingly, then their [judges’] accountability will become an issue,” said Alieva. “For the moment, their rulings still carry legal force, and until they are reversed, judges cannot be held to account.”
Aydarkulov says the role and culpability of officials will have to be examined on a case-by-case basis before charges can be brought.
“As far as I know, the kind of violations that occurred might constitute forgery or abuse of office,” he said.
Prosecutor General Elmurza Satybaldiev says his office is looking into 36 criminal cases concerning adoptions and another 200 civil-law cases.
Meanwhile, the findings of a special parliamentary commission set up to look into foreign adoptions may lead to officials and even members of the judiciary facing prosecution.
Rights activists say the commission’s work highlights the need for better, more comprehensive legislation to protect children in care.
The special commission uncovered a web of deceit and corruption that allowed children to be shipped abroad. The going rate was 36,000 US dollars, of which staff at the various institutions involved would take a cut.
The head of the commission, Nikolai Bailo, says staff at the education ministry took bribes from foreigners to facilitate the process. “They had an obvious interest in doing so,” he added.
Commenting on these cases, chief prosecutor Satybaldiev spoke of a chain of perpetrators including “childcare agencies in district government offices, the judges who ruled on cases, and the intermediaries”.
“There was corruption everywhere,” he added.
According to the commission’s report, “care and guardianship institutions, local government, and the head doctors at children’s homes have an evident interest in accelerating the process of resolving issues [in favour] of the foreign firms empowered to act on behalf of the adopting parents.”
One favoured method, according to the commission, was to take a child in care and forge documentation to record some medical problem which would make them more eligible for adoption.
Under the current law, a foreign national can adopt a child only if no adoptive or foster parent or other guardian can be found within the country. In practice, this has meant children with serious medical conditions requiring costly treatment – a loophole that seems to have been abused.
In one case, a child was given a clean bill of health by a medical commission at the Osh regional hospital as a prelude to being placed in a children’s home. Once there, however, the child was given a new medical record by the resident doctor diagnosing anaemia and an internal infection
The parliamentarians found that children’s homes in Bishkek and Tokmok as well as Osh – a wide geographical area – had engaged in this fictitious diagnosis in order to fast-track their wards for adoption abroad.
In an interview with IWPR, Deputy Prime Minister Uktomkhan Abdullaeva said that since the rules were eased in 2005, 225 children had been adopted and taken abroad, mainly to the United States, Israel, France, Sweden and Italy.
For foreign nationals, the process begins with an application and accompanying documentation which go via the foreign ministry to the Ministry of Education and Science, which selects an appropriate child from those currently in care. A court then rules on whether the adoption can go ahead.
Until Kyrgyzstan introduced a code of family law in 2005, the legislative framework for adoption followed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and a government resolution concerning children without guardians. It was the government, not the courts, that had the final say in foreign adoption cases.
Kyrgyzstan has yet to ratify the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, which contains provisions on a child’s rights in cases of adoption from abroad. The Kyrgyz parliament is currently reviewing the issue with a view to ratification.
The 2005 law made the adoption process a lot simpler, although the findings of the parliamentary commission suggest the regulatory mechanisms became laxer.
Yelena Gavrilova of the League of Child Right Defenders in Kyrgyzstan says officials appear to be making up the rules as they go along.
“Every local government administration seems to be setting its own rules of the game. Each one has its own views on what kind of documentation needs to be submitted,” she said. “The adoption process is therefore not set down in stone in terms of legislation. Someone might have gathered all the right documents, but how is one to know whether the child will fare well in that family, how fit the prospective adoptive parents are – mentally and morally – to take on the role, or whether they’ve undertaken any kind of training course?”
Prime Minister Igor Chudinov recognises there is a problem, noting that it extends to domestic adoptions as well as foreign ones.
“New mechanisms are being drafted on the basis of the parliamentary commission’s work – first, to sign up to the relevant international conventions, and second, to resolve all matters relating to domestic procedures,” he told IWPR. “Unfortunately, we haven’t had clear mechanisms set down in law or in government regulatory instructions.”
In the cases revealed by the commission, Chudinov promised that “the guilty will be punished”.
Bailo says when it comes to blame, the education minister should be held responsible. “The rest will follow,” he added.
In practical term, the prosecution service has requested all the court rulings relating to foreign adoptions.
“They [prosecutors] are asking that a new deadline be set for prosecutors to appeal against these decisions, and are demanding that they be annulled,” said Janyl Alieva, chair of Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court.
This could result in calls for adopted children to be returned from abroad.
Ulukbek Aydarkulov, a lawyer practicing in the Adilet legal aid clinic, says that if the original court rulings permitting adoption are overturned, he says, “everything naturally has to be returned to how it was at the outset; in other words the children will have to be returned to their home country”.
However, judicial proceedings will take a long time to wind up because if any wrongdoing is found, there will still be an appeals process.
Meanwhile, “other circumstances may have arisen while the child is in the other country, so everything will be have to be examined on an individual basis”.
Chief prosecutor Satybaldiev says it is too early to be talking about successful prosecutions of offenders in the state system; this will come only after “the judiciary have reviewed our appeal claims against earlier court rulings”.
Judges who are found to have issued deliberately misleading rulings in foreign adoption cases could themselves face punishment.
“If there were clear breaches of the law, and if wrong decisions were issued knowingly, then their [judges’] accountability will become an issue,” said Alieva. “For the moment, their rulings still carry legal force, and until they are reversed, judges cannot be held to account.”
Aydarkulov says the role and culpability of officials will have to be examined on a case-by-case basis before charges can be brought.
“As far as I know, the kind of violations that occurred might constitute forgery or abuse of office,” he said.
