Head of the parliamentary committee on family, youth, sport and tourism affairs Mykola Tomenko declares necessity to solve the problem on state control over adoption of Ukrainian children by foreign citizens. Tomenko told Tuesday, opening a roundtable, dedicated to adoption problems.

Tomenko noted that despite authorities’ efforts as regards national adoption, statistics on this issue is not very optimistic. Hence, in 2005 foreigners adopted 2156 Ukrainian children, and Ukrainians adopted only 1419.

“And now international adoption is in shadow, what means that state bodies and structures do not control the conditions and further fate of adopted children. In many case, the matter concerns a kind of a business. In internet you can find information about our children with price-lists, which show that one can “buy “a child for five-ten thousand dollars. It proves that there is a kind of shady business here,” Tomenko noted.

Speaking about necessity to join Convention on children protection and cooperation in international adoption, Tomenko reminded that 69 countries have already ratified it for now. Among them are almost all countries, citizens of which adopt Ukrainian children, except for Russia and the USA, which signed bu did not ratified the Convention.

Tomenko stated that ratification of the Convention is possible only after a number changes in national legislation concerning this sphere. “Official rights and control over adoption sphere by the state are extremely needed in Ukraine,” the head of the committee said.

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Comments

mhemmen (20:27 | 07 November,2006)

By price list do they mean the agency fee schedule? This is not paid for the child, it is paid for the services the agency provides - paperwork, translations, apostilles, overhead fees etc. It also isn't free to fly over to Ukraine, nor is it free to stay in an apartment or hotel there. So yes, adoptions do cost money, but this is in no way child traffiking. This is the same set of fees for domestic adoptions and the same for international adoptions from countries other than Ukraine. There are always a few corrupt people, but they are not the majority.