A Calculation: The 'Orphan Crisis' in Ethiopia
By <
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-ligtvoet> Frank Ligtvoet
Posted: 11/03/2014 9:34 am
A Unicef report states that in Ethiopia there are at this moment 4.5 million
orphans on a population of some 90 million. The 4.5 million means that 5
percent of the total population is an orphan. Orphans are in Ethiopia
defined as children under 18 whose both parents died. They died of AIDS,
untreated illnesses, hunger, draught and war.
Ethiopia is one example of the many countries where a newly formed US
Foreign Affairs agency will work if the Children in Families First (CHIFF)
legislation is passed in congress. The law aims to connect these orphans
through family reunification, domestic, kinship or inter country adoption. A
great idea, because it stresses the importance of child welfare in dealing
with what is called the world orphan crisis.
There is a lot of criticism on the law from adoptee organizations and
individual adoptees, not only because they, who are in a certain way the
subject of the bill, were not a party in the development of it, but also for
many other reasons which are comprehensively described in an article in the
<
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/22/1279650/-Children-In-Families-Firs
t-CHIFF-and-the-Evangelical-Adoption-Movement> Daily Kos. One of the
concerns of the adoptees and their non-adopted supporters is that adoption
regulations are loosened in an international adoption climate that asks
right now for stronger regulations: child trafficking, baby stealing and
corruption are rampant in the worldwide 'adoption industry.' Another
argument is that the law, more than dealing with the problems of the
orphans, essentially supports the interests of American families who want to
adopt. DeLeith Duke Gossett of the Texas Tech University School of Law wrote
among other things about that in an article for the
<
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2400603##> Hawaii Law
Review.
I think that the numbers support this last criticism. Elsewhere I
<
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-ligtvoet/captain-america-does-it-a_b_48
87507.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics> calculated that the law can
probably invest a maximum of 22.5 cents per orphan. The budget for Ethiopia
through CHIFF for those four issues of family reunification, domestic,
kinship or inter country adoption will be $1,012,500. Let us compare that to
the planned Ethiopia investments of Unicef for 2014. It has for child
protection $2,700,000 alone and with that money they think to reach 1.4
million kids. Next to that Unicef has budgeted more than $28,000,000 for
food, healthcare, water, education and coordination. The CHIFF money is not
very impressive in this context: a million for 4 million kids.
The comparison also shows that Unicef spends its money in coordination with
other problems which children in Ethiopia are confronted with: hunger,
health care and so forth. The CHIFF orphan seems to be an orphan with no
other context than family, which is not only technically limited but also a
rather foreign concept in big parts of the Ethiopian society. The idea that
the American government would set up an organization in Ethiopia outside the
international community is already unusual, but if that organization only
has a budget of just over a million dollars we are nearing the realm of the
ridiculous.
Americans adopt about 2,000 children annually from Ethiopia. If we calculate
the median costs for each adoption at $46,000 (Adoptive Families, Winter
2014), then we have a total of $92,000,000, that is 92 times the sum CHIFF
has available. Money talks, and money talks in many languages. In Ethiopia
78 percent of the population struggles with an income below $2 a day. So a
bribe of $1,000 is a year's income for many poor Ethiopians. If the adoption
industry is not carefully regulated it will result in more adoption
coercion, baby stealing, child trafficking and corruption.
CHIFF doesn't address these difficult issues and focuses on the bright side
of adoptions on their Facebook page. I don't deny that there can be a bright
side, but that brightness is, to put it mildly, severely dimmed by the
darkness that broods underneath it.
Three more things about CHIFF. First mathematical: imagine CHIFF would pass
congress and the new regulations would raise the total annual adoptions to
4,000 or 10,000 or even a million: the problem of the orphans in Ethiopia is
not at all solved. To solve the 'orphan crisis' bigger and probably more
economically painful measures have to be taken. Secondly the US has to do
its work in a Foreign Affairs context. Third it must focus on the
psychological aspect of adoption. If you were adopted from Ethiopia and at a
certain point in life you would understand that your existence in the US
depended on cheating out your first parents by a system that was supported
and condoned by your by now home country, how would you feel about that
country, your adoptive parents, the adoption industry? How would you feel
about yourself and who you are?
Ethiopia is but one example of the many countries where the 'orphan crisis'
plays out. There are, says the CHIFF website, 200,000,000 orphans. As in
Ethiopia in all those other countries CHIFF will not make any difference in
that crisis. It will make a difference for American families who want to
adopt and who, sorry to say, don't care about the origins of their child.
Received on Tue Mar 11 2014 - 13:42:18 EDT