Recommendation drafting: Child Welfare in Adoption

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Description: The General Assembly,

BELIEVING that intercountry adoption can be beneficial to nations experiencing difficulty with their internal rate of adoption and to children in need of a loving home,

FRUSTRATED with the reality that member nations each have differing rules and regulations regarding intercountry adoption,

CONCERNED that such a myriad of bureaucratic minutiae poses a danger to the welfare of children involved in intercountry adoptions, and unnecessarily increases the risk of child abuse and trafficking,

HOPEFUL that the consolidation of these varied rules and regulations will aid in the safekeeping of vulnerable children, as well as break down barriers to intercountry adoption,

Hereby

DEFINES, for the purpose of this resolution, the following:

i. child: an individual under the threshold of majority in both the country of origin and the recipient country,

ii. prospective adopter: a party who is seeking to adopt a child;

STRONGLY ENCOURAGES member nations to permit intercountry adoption;

DEMANDS that, should one not already exist, each member nation that permits intercountry adoption establish a state or semi-state agency, to be known as National Adoption Boards, which shall have the following duties:

i. to maintain a register of children available within that nation for adoption,

ii. to work with and vet prospective adopters in that nation, and

iii. to liaise with National Adoption Boards in other member nations during intercountry adoption processes;

DECREES that any intercountry adoption between member nations must be conducted between National Adoption Boards, and that no transfer of children shall take place until the intercountry adoption is finalised and confirmed;

REQUIRES National Adoption Boards to consider the welfare and wishes of all children available for adoption, in particular with determining if intercountry adoption is appropriate for each individual child;

CREATES the World Assembly Adoption Authority (WAAA) to establish and implement a stringent and rigorous uniform code of rules and regulations regarding intercountry adoption;

MANDATES that all National Adoption Boards be member organisations of WAAA and that they adhere to all these regulations, procedures, and standards established;

DECLARES that no National Adoption Board may establish regulations, procedures, protocols, or standards regarding intercountry adoption that are contradictory or additional to those established by WAAA;

FORBIDS WAAA from establishing standards, protocols, and procedures that could reasonably be construed to be discriminatory (e.g. disallowing an intercountry adoption based on the prospective adopter's, or child's, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, or marital status), unless there are compelling practical reasons to do so;

PROSCRIBES the transfer of children by member nations to non-member nations in an effort to circumvent any facet of this resolution;

OUTLAWS the practice of buying children, in which financial or in-kind payments are exchanged to ensure an individual receives a child, however;

ACKNOWLEDGES that, in the case of adoption processes, some reasonable fees may be charged by National Adoption Boards, and/or their domestic affiliates, for expenses incurred during the adoption process.

This goes to vote tomorrow. So we have some time to prepare a recommendation on it.

I've given this some serious thought. I'm fairly neutral about the resolution. If it were about almost any other topic I'd be decrying it as an overreach, but it's telling one of the few resolutions bearing my name is about children(and I've co-authored another on children as well).

I'll see what Scion has to say, but I think my personal opinion is abstain.

I do like this. It's a genuinely international issue by nature because intercountry adoption policy cannot possibly be formulated in an efficient manner by individual nations. A prospective parent in one nation would need to deal with different protocols and regulations when dealing with adoption agencies in separate nations in the absence of a uniform process like the one that this proposal seeks to establish. I personally see coordinating activities in such a way that could not otherwise be accomplished by individual member nations or groups of member nations as a major responsibility of the World Assembly, and I think this proposal does that well.

I also like Sanc and trust him as an author, so overall, I'd say yes to this.

Thank you both. I edited Scion's text a little and and used it to send a recommendation for. You can see the IFV I sent here.

For the record, I was originally planning to create dispatches with our recommendations for all resolutions that go to vote. However, I have been re-thinking that. Creating dispatches for all resolutions can potentially dilute their effectiveness, so it may be better to keep them just for critical resolutions where the vote is split. What do you think?