UNICEF Warns India of Phony Foreign Adoption Deals

Originally published by Reuters, Friday February 9, 2001

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) — UNICEF, the U.N. Children's Fund, warned India on Friday that some foreign agencies seeking to adopt children orphaned by the recent killer earthquake could be child slavery dealers instead.

The Indian military has said it was identifying the orphans and would put their names up for adoption on a Web site following the Jan. 26 earthquake in which some 30,000 people were killed and tens of thousand injured or made homeless.

UNICEF cautioned that bids from international adoption agencies should serve only as a last resort for the children, after extended families or other people in the community.

Maria Calivis, the UNICEF representative in India, who was in the earthquake zone in Gujarat state earlier this week, said that ''unscrupulous child traffickers may try to pass themselves off as legitimate agents of good.''

"Well-meaning people around the world might think international adoption is in the best interests of a child who has lost his or her parents,'' she said. "But adoption within the extended family or community is recognized as the first and best option both by Indian and international law.''

UNICEF gave no evidence, however, that child traffickers were in the area.

Reliable figures on how many children were orphaned were not available. Some groups have estimated that up to 8,000 children were left without parents, but UNICEF said that was too high. A 1999 cyclone in the Indian state of Orissa, with a comparable death toll of 30,000, identified some 1,500 orphans.

But UNICEF estimated that at least 3 million children under age 15 were directly affected by the earthquake in the six hardest-hit districts of Gujarat, with their schools and homes destroyed.