This story did not make national headlines, but the story is an important one to understand for anyone working in international adoption.
On December 7th, 2012, the Intercountry Adoption Universal Accreditation Act passed the senate. The bill was sponsored by Senators Mary Landrieu, John Kerry, Dick Lugar and James Inhofe in a bipartisan effort to increase the accountability of adoption agencies facilitating international adoptions.
Currently adoption agencies who facilitate international adoptions do not have to be accredited, leading to inconsistent practices and opportunities for misuse and fraud. U.S. agencies that work with Hague countries (that is, those countries that have signed the Hague convention) must be accredited; however many small agencies work with non-Hague countries and are not accredited through the Council of Accreditation (COA) in the U.S. The new legislation will require that all adoption agenices facilitating international adoptions will need to be in compliance with the accreditation requirements necessary for working with Hague countries even if they facilitate adoptions with non-Hague countries.
The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption is an international treaty that aims to protect children involved in intercountry adoption from abduction, kidnapping, sale, exploitation and trafficking for the purpose of adoption.
For more information see Senator Landrieu’s site here.
For a list of current Hague-accredited agencies, see the Department of State’s website here.