A Dad's Journey Through International Adoption: Hey it's the Hague

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Hey it's the Hague

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Ryan posted a comment about the Hague Treaty and what impact it will have on international adoptions. I know this is the latest buzz on adoption forums so I thought I would toss out my 2 cents on the subject.

First we should understand what the treaty is all about, it's part of the Hague Convention and it covers may other areas beyond adoption (the whole Apostile thing is another part of the Convention). The other important thing is it's an international treaty and it's pretty rare for the U.S. to sign one of those, but surprise of surprises we actually did (albeit a bit later than most).

For the adoption part of the Convention, back in 2000 Congress enacted the Intercountry Adoption Act, our (the United States’) implementing legislation for the Hague Convention on International Adoption. But somehow it took Bush six years to actually get it implemented. Even communist China got it done before we did!

So while everyone is all upset that the Russian government took a few months to get NGO's figured out (not to mention the current 268 issues), our government appears like a group of low grade morons by comparison. And if you've ever met your congressperson or senator (or president for that matter) you probably agree.

But I digress.

The key contents of the adoption part of the treaty insure that all adoption agencies who operate in other Hague Convention countries are accredited under the guidelines of the Convention. This accreditation occurs within the agency's home country and Dept. of State is using Colorado's Dept. of Human Services to do all the accreditations.

When I asked Stef what her feeling were she astutely pointed out that most of the larger agencies probably won't see this as a big issue since they have the resources and manpower to get whatever documentation is required. Some smaller agencies may have to pass those costs on to the adopting parents but again, I really doubt it's going to be a big deal.

And in some cases the accreditation doesn't even matter at all. For example, in our situation. Since Russia has not yet implemented it, there's no need for agencies doing adoptions in Russia to have this new accreditation. Of course our agency is very large and works in many many countries (some of which are "Hague Countries" ) so they'll most likely be working on getting this done anyway. And Russia, like the U.S., will get around to implementing it at some point.

posted by Steveg @ 9:46 PM

1 Comments:

At 7:46 AM, Anonymous said…

Your comments support what I've heard. Thx for updates and thanks for the blog. I enjoy receiving updates from someone else who is about 6 months ahead of us in the process. It helps tremendously in knowing what to expect.

Ryan

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I'm Steve and this is my wife Stefanie. This is our story, mostly seen through my eyes, of the journey to create our family by adopting a child from Russia.

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