Foreign adoptions can soon resume from 6 countries, but not U.S., China or Colombia

Netherlands residents will soon again be allowed to adopt children from abroad, but only from a limited number of countries. The government decided to allow foreign adoption from the Philippines, Hungary, Lesotho, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Africa. No adoptions will be allowed from the United States, China, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Peru, Colombia, Burkina Faso, and Haiti, Minister Franc Weerwind for Legal Protection announced.

According to Weerwind, the Netherlands’ cooperation with the six approved countries is intensifying, which benefits the procedures involved in adoption. Bulgaria and Portugal will likely be added to the approved list early next year after further investigation by the Central Authority for International Children’s Affairs.

When deciding which countries to allow intercountry adoption from, the government looked at “the necessity and need from the country of origin for intercountry adoption, the way in which care is sought in one’s own country, and the security situation.”

“In the past period, important steps have been taken in the field of intercountry adoption. Now that it is clear from which countries intercountry adoption will remain possible and which not, information meetings will follow, and family surveys will be resumed. This will bring an end to an uncertain time for those involved,” said Weerwind.

The Netherlands halted all adoptions from abroad in February 2021 after an investigative committee revealed serious problems in the process. The committee identified child theft, child trafficking, corruption, unethical acts by civil servants, forgery and the theft of documents, and children brought to the Netherlands under false pretenses. Adoptive parents started a petition to restart foreign adoption a week after the government banned it.

In June last year, Sander Dekker said, “the future of foreign adoptions must be looked at very carefully. The interests of the child are paramount.” At the time, Dekker was serving as the Minister of Legal Protection in Mark Rutte’s third Cabinet. He cautioned it could take a substantial amount of time and money to repair the current system to stop “serious structural abuses” that took place in previous years.

The government did not say why it is phasing out adoptions from the United States, China, and the other countries, but did say the decision does not mean that abuses have been discovered or are suspected. The Ministry believes that adoption applications already filed in those countries can continue, and the Central Authority will consult with these countries about this.