A new piece from Conducive by Kevin Minh. The Price We All Pay: Human Trafficking in International Adoption.
Adoption is already steeped in the legacy of loss for the child and his family. Add to this the recent revelations of the selling of babies for adoption in countries like Vietnam and India, and one needs only to reconsider who exactly is benefiting from adoption. Kevin Minh Allen, a Vietnamese adoptee, explores ways to effectively address this element of human trafficking. These include, but are not limited to, having the U.S. government sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and diverting funds away from the adoption industry and into worthwhile child welfare programs in their home countries.
Noteworthy, is that the U.S. State Department does not consider the procurement of a child for adoption through either coercion or other forms of intimidation, or the adopting out of a child for profit, to be human trafficking.
Read the rest of the article here.
Harlow's Monkey 