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herently suspect as Lady Nicholson has made it clear that she believes that there is no such thing as good ICA.

Lady Nicholson has stated: "It was a mistake from the beginning to assume that for a child, a foreign adoptive family is better than the family which can not care for him. This is totally false."

Following her own logic, in 2001 Lady Nicholson pressured the Romanian government into declaring a moratorium on all ICA. Her justification was that Unicef supported such a ban because it viewed that ICA was not a preferred alternative under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

In January 2004, Unicef clarified its position on ICA, stating that ICA was preferable to home-country institutionalization—and undercutting Lady Nicholson's anti-ICĂ platform. Those of us who believe that every child should have a family of his or her own rejoiced.

But Lady Nicholson struck back as soon as the Unicef statement became public. Using the excuse that Romania had made too many exceptions to the ICA moratorium, she told the Romanians in no uncertain terms that their application to the EU was in grave trouble. She could no longer claim that Unicef opposed ICA. Instead, Lady Nicholson stated that Romania's corrupt judiciary and legal practices legitimized her opposition to ICA.

Lady Nicholson's power in large part stemmed from her position as chair of Romania's EU application committee, a post she held until September 2004. Although she was then replaced by Pierre Moscovici as committee chair, she was promoted to vice president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, and Liberal Party adviser to Mr. Moscovici.

Her leverage in Bucharest remains enormous. She has promised EU aid for the orphanages/foster homes that will be needed to care for the tens of thousands of children she intends to keep penned up in Romania. Think of it: The Romanians get to make progress on their EU application and she provides jobs as well.

On June 15 of last year, the Romanian Parliament, caving in completely to Lady Nicholson, passed a bill that totally banned ICA except in cases of biological grandparents living abroad. This became law on Jan. 1, 2005.

While the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush has publicly and privately intervened to try to keep ICA alive in Romania, there are no new carrots to offer Romania to offset the blessing of EU membership that Romania so clearly craves. Unfortunately, the best interests of children are easily subsumed to a larger agenda. Institutionalized children have no seat on the committees that negotiate treaties among nations.

Will the world stand silent while Romania's abandoned children are sentenced to a life without families of their own? Three weeks ago, a killer wave abruptly ended the lives of thousands of children in its wake. We have seen an enormous outpouring of concern, generous grants of time and money by the international community. The knowledge that an early warning system could have saved many lives has generated vows of "never again."

We are sounding the alarm for institutionalized children, in Romania and elsewhere. Their numbers exceed those killed in the recent tsunami tragedy. Dooming them to lives without families is a

preventable tragedy, in plain sight of those who have the will to keep looking when the media frenzy has moved on.

ICA may not save every abandoned child the fate of institutionalization, but it will save some children. For those it is the same as receiving the life-bestowing miracle of having ten extra minutes to flee the tsunami to higher ground. It is our obligation to ensure that the right to grow up in a family is preserved for the most vulnerable members of society.

Dr. Kunz and Ms. Reese are co-directors of the New York-based Center for Adoption Policy.

STATEMENT SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY THE

ROMANIANS WORLDWIDE GROUP

September 10, 2005

The Romanians Worldwide Group (RWW Group)—an international Romanian lobby group is actively lobbying for the rights of children in Romania, and for improving the quality of life of all institutionalized children in that country.

The former Romanian Government has approved new legislation in 2004 that bans de facto all inter-country adoptions.

From a legal standpoint, one can argue Romania is infringing it's own obligations under the Hague Convention for inter-country adoptions. In a letter addressed to the former Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase on February 6, 2004, Pierre Poupard, UNICEF's representative, has highlighted the conflict before the law was enacted:

"[...JUNICEF would respectfully suggest that Romania avoids legislating the imposition of an unqualified and definitive ban on any future adoption of a Romanian child abroad. European States generally leave open the possibility for inter- country adoption from their territory, recognising that there may be given circumstances such as extended family members abroad-where the child's best interests might be served by such a solution."

Source: media 1919.html

UNICEF,

http://www.unicef.org/romania/

The effects of the new legislation show the legal framework, and the institutions it has created cannot respond properly to benefit all of Romania's institutionalized children. There are roughly 49,000 children in Romanian institutions according to 2002 Romanian statistics. UNICEF has revealed in its 2005 country report that there were 4000 abandoned children per year in Romania, a pattern that remained unchanged from previous years.

Source: media 24892.html

UNICEF,

http://www.unicef.org/media/

In response to RWW Group's request, the Romanian Office for Adoptions (ROA)—the newly created child adoption authority-has confirmed in a letter dated June 1st, 2005 that 345 internal adoptions have been approved by Romanian Courts since the new child protection legislation has entered into force on January 1, 2005.

If the Romanian institutions would keep up the pace, and there would be a continuous pool of Romanian families willing to adopt, there would be a number of 700 approved internal adoptions yearly in Romania, roughly.

This projection could mean a disaster to come for Romanian institutionalized children: the internal adoption rate cannot even cover 25% of the abandonment rate. Since there is a ban on intercountry adoptions in effect in Romania, there is no other choice for these children to find a family abroad. As it stands today, most of them will be condemned to live their life in an institution until adulthood.

Under the Hague Convention regulating inter-country adoptions foreign adoptions are a means to provide for the well being of certain categories of children, especially if such children cannot be adopted internally. In a narrow interpretation, Romanian officials now only speak of the requirement to promote internal adoptions,

while offering no other details of what Romania intends to do with children that have not been adopted by Romanians.

The Romanian Government, although quite vocal about child protection progress registered by Romania, keeps a low profile when it comes to discussing a revision of its current legislation to allow inter-country adoptions for some eligible categories of children.

It is a well-known fact that a handful of powerful EU lobbyists had played a key role in pushing Romania to adopt the adoption ban, under threat that the country would not be granted EU membership. However, no contingency plan to support all institutionalized children in Romania has been developed.

The EU does not have a common policy regarding child protection; hence no EU budget item has been discussed for this matter. Only limited EU funds are available to Romania through a non-refundable assistance program called PHARE. Since the EU itself has other priorities, Romania will most likely face serious financial limitations for its overly ambitious child protection goals.

It is hard to accept that opinions shared by a few EU lobbyists can be imposed on a government, and thousands of unfortunate kids, even if it bears the EU stamp of approval. It makes even less sense to avoid tackling the real problems associated with intercountry adoptions by enforcing a permanent ban.

RWW Group considers that Romania needs to re-open the debate at various levels: international, to improve safeguards for intercountry adoptions and effectively abolish any form of child trade, and domestic, to encourage civil debate about Romanian institutionalized children. That should lead to progressive and flexible legislation that will benefit not only politicians, but also the thousands of needy, parentless children who might then have the opportunity to find loving homes.

Sincerely,

DR. THEODOR BAN,

President and co-founder, RWW Group, The Netherlands

FLORIN RAPAN,

Co-founder, RWW Group, Canada

FLORENTINA BAN,

Co-founder, RWW Group, Romania

STATEMENT SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY

FOR THE CHILDREN-SOS

With the new child welfare legislation-requested by Baroness Emma Nicholson, Romania's former EU rapporteur (currently their shadow rapporteur), signed into law June 21, 2004 and enacted January 1, 2005, a crisis in child welfare is now being realized.

In several counties it is already being reported that the local governments have no funds to pay the foster parents so the children are being placed in institutions (See attached article). Private payment for foster care (by American parents) is no longer allowed. For those children who have spent their young lives in foster care this is inhumane and a serious form of child abuse. Abandoned babies are stockpiling in hospitals as under the new law a child under the age of 2 must either be placed in foster care or remain in hospital. As of May 17, 2005 only 9 domestic adoptions are in progress-with none being finalized. (See attached article)

In October of 2001, prior to their acceptance into NATO, both former Prime Minister Nastase and President Iliescu publicly and privately told U.S. government officials that new child welfare legislation would be written to allow for inter-country adoption and humane treatment of the abandoned children left behind. An Emergency Ordinance was signed into law which allowed for special needs children and pending adoptions to continue to be processed. In February of 2004 this Emergency Ordinance was suspended after continued pressure from Baroness Nicholson and other EU Enlargement officials. Baroness Nicholson has repeatedly—and publicly-accused international adoptive parents of child trafficking, sexually abusing their children, selling their adopted children's organs, and other atrocities. Nicholson also claims that it's "cultural genocide" for a child to be internationally adopted as they lose their language and culture.

From 2001-2004 the Romanian government continued to promise the United States (and other countries) that new child welfare legislation would be written to allow for transparent, fair and humane laws that not only allowed for inter-country adoption, but would address the needs of thousands of voiceless, abandoned children. Innumerable foreign NGO's and professionals worked diligently with the Romanian government to draft this legislation. In February of 2004 this drafted legislation was thrown out, hastily crafted legislation dictated by several British "child welfare professionals" was put in its place which banned inter-country adoption On July 17th, 2004, former Prime Minister Nastase met with President Bush and promised to review the pending cases. It never happened. In October of 2004 the formation of an International Committee to review the pending cases was announced by Prime Minister Nastase and the French Prime Minister. This committee has never been formed. On March 10th, 2005, in a meeting with For the Children SOS and members of our State Dept., President Basescu offered his opinion that the new legislation is too restrictive and should be revised, but emphasized that he would not jeopardize EU accession to do so at this time. However, he promised to have representatives in Brussels as soon as possible asking that the pending cases for adoption be finalized on humanitarian grounds. We are still waiting.

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