The flagrant inconsistency between certain provisions in the Romanian law and stipulations of the U.N. Conventions of Child Rights and the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption was also invoked. In spring 2001, ABC's "20/20" broadcast a story called "Children For Sale"-and I remember that late Peter Jennings was the producer-which clearly depicted how special interests and money were generating and even encouraging new situations of child abandonment instead of finding families already waiting in state institutions. Indeed I remember this was my first month as Ambassador in Washington, and it was an absolutely moving story, which could prove that a child could be actually ordered to be conceived and then, you know, born-9 or 10 months in advance. But we have started to be, unfortunately, viewed as a market for international adoptions, where financial considerations prevail over humanitarian dimension which were assuring the best interest of the child. This is why the Romanian Government had decided to institute a clear policy of finding a national solution for children and to impose a moratorium on international adoption. The purpose of the moratorium on international adoptions was to provide the time needed to develop appropriate new legislation and administrative capacity to ensure that intercountry adoptions would be restored exclusively in the best interests of the child if no other suitable form of care was available in Romania. During October 2001 and December 2004, while the moratorium was in force, Romania had no legal framework to support the registration and support the processing of the new cases of international adoption. Between December 2001 and February 2004, the government has approved international adoptions for the cases registered before the moratorium, the so-called pipeline cases, and all U.S. cases-according to our information and statistics-of international adoptions submitted before the moratorium were finalized. Nonetheless, foreign families continue to file requests to adopt Romanian children based on expectations that the ban on international adoptions would be lifted after the approval of the new Romanian law, and indeed it was a decision, as Ambassador Harty mentioned, of Romanian courts to register such adoption, but there was no legal framework to process them. The United States pending cases omit the above-mentioned, but it's essential to emphasize that none of these around 200 cases that currently await approval for adopting Romanian children had filed requests prior to October 2001. And also it is important to stress that the registration of the petition for international adoption during the moratorium presents an administrative act and not specifically signifying the approval of the request, and I want to point this out because there was a sense of reports that these were approved cases, that were actually registered cases. Irregularities involving international adoptions registered during the moratorium were observed-I'm quoting some of the results of the inquiry-that many of the requests for adoptions were referring to children who did not have adoptable status. All efforts focus on declaring the child adoptable without any previous effort to integrate him or her into the biological or extended families, thus diluting the provision of the Hague Convention. Many of the files were incomplete, many files failed to even identify a child, and there were also situations where the families were nominating several children for adoption or where the same child was nominated by several adoptive families. The majority of American families have submitted application for children younger than 3 years old. Those children could not be adopted internationally, even according to the formal methodology, through the government ordinance issued during the moratorium. So all these shortcomings basically led to the conclusion that the system failed to act in the best interest of the child, and the quality of the conclusion was that it was prior identification of a child for a family and not a family for a child. The new legislative framework that regulates the current status of adoption in Romania came into effect on January 1, 2005, and is based on the principle of promoting the best interest of the child. It was drafted together with a group of European and international partners, and it was drafted taking into consideration the U.N. Convention on Child's Rights, the Hague Convention of Protection of Children, and the European practices in the field. The final version of the new legislative framework included recommendation of the Council of Europe as well. The U.N. Convention on Child's Rights states that the best interest of the child shall be the most important reasoning in the field of adoption. This implies that no other interest-economical, political, state safety, or adoptive persons-will have priority and will be considered equal to the interest of the child, the rights of the child being primordial compared to the rights of the adults. Thus, it is necessary to emphasize that the new Romanian legislation in the field of adoption provides as a final goal even identification of family for the child and not the other way around. The existing legislation approaches a child in the context of all his or her rights, basically the context of his/her biological family, trying to raise awareness of the primordial nature of parental role and responsibility toward one's own child. The new legislation regulates the following aspects that were not regulated by the previous legislation. First, procedure and situations in which a child can be adopted. The individualized protection plan identifies domestic adoptions as the final solution for the child's welfare, provided that all the efforts to integrate the child within the biological family and to integrate the child within the extended family have failed. International adoption is considered as an option of last resort, and only for the biological grandparents who are living abroad. According to the previous legislation, the activities meant to reintegrate the child in the biological family were not stimulating, thus giving priority to the adoption and not reintegration of the child into his or her family, this being in contradiction with the U.N. Convention of Child's Rights. Second, only the court decides the initiation of a domestic adoption process after rigorously checking that all means of reinte grating the child in the biological family or integrating in the extended family have been exhausted. Under the previous procedure, the previous legislation encouraged the identification of a child for a family willing to adopt and not reunification of a family function of the specific case of each child, after exhausting the means of reintegrating the child into family. In practice, many families met the children before those children had the status of "adoptable," thus violating the regulations of the Hague Convention. Third, the maintenance of the right of the parents to withdraw, parents withdrawn of its parental rights, for whom the punishment to forbid parental rights was applied to consent to the adoption of the child. This provision results from the temporary reversible nature of the measure of withdrawing parental rights and from the permanent and irreversible nature of adopting regarding the natural descendent. Even in the mentioned conditions, the previous law did not emphasize the right and the responsibility of the parents toward their own children. Fourth, the obligation to counsel the biological parents or their legal representative previously to their consent of adoption, provision of the Hague Convention. The court has the certitude that the parents freely consent to the adoption and no payment or advantage intervened in order to obtain the consent. The previous legislation did not stipulate this provision, and the child would be declared abandoned ex officio if the family had not maintained a relationship with the child for more than 6 months. Regarding the results registered in the field of child protection during March 1998 and 2000, based upon the information indicated in the attached annexes-and the statement with the annexes are provided to the Helsinki Commission and also will be available on the Web site of the Embassy-the following observations can be noted: The number of national adoptions increased simultaneously, with diminution of the number of international adoptions every year after 2001. Since the moratorium on international adoptions entered into force, the efforts focus on identifying Romanian families for children declared adoptable have increased. Romania's domestic capability to protect its own children by reintegrating them in their natural family, extended family, or national adoption has improved. For example, during January/March 2005, 1,312 children were reintegrated in their biological family. The number of children protected in substitutive families, extended foster families, has increased, but the number of children protected in placement centers decreased starting with 2000. The number of alternative services increased during 2002-2004, and with this I mean services to prevent child separation from his/ her family as well as support services for the integration of the child within the family. As the result of development of these services, the number of children protected in the system has substantially decreased. The alternative services have also a positive impact on addressing the problem of child abandonment in the country. During 2004, out of 4,614 children left in maternity hospitals-and I want to really stress this figure, this was the number in 2004 of abandoned children, 4,614, in maternity hospitals and pediatric sections—a number of 2,389 children were reintegrated within their biological family; 940 children were placed within foster families-I have a chart, here is the Annex No. 3, which is focused on the year 2004, Annex No. 4-and the number of children who are in private centers are the difference, which is 768. And I wanted to stress these signals, because they are showing a new trend in the reduction of abandonment, or option of abandonment, reintegrating in a family, due to the efforts of making the families aware about their responsibilities and the importance to keep children within their families. Regarding the age of the children protected in the residential systems, starting with 2002, the number of under-a-year-old children has decreased significantly, from 1,028 children in 2002 to 436 children in 2004, meaning that a number of children who entered during the initial system has decreased significantly in this period. At the end of 2004, under-10-year-old children protected in the residential system represented 22 percent of the total of the children in the residential system. The number of children who entered during the initial system also shows the tendency of significant de crease. At the beginning of 2005, 1,047 families soliciting the adoption of a child have been registered in the national register for adoption. 688 domestic adoptions have been approved by now and, of course, initiated domestic adoption for 192 children. And there are also 217 pending cases in view of initiating the adoption procedure. The general conclusion of these analyses is the following: The number of children that entered in a residential care system decreased following the development of the services to prevent child separations from his/her family; also the number of children protected in the family care system increased compared to the number of children in the residential system; and, third, the number of national adoptions increased, while the international adoptions decreased. The mentioned results indicate the progress obtained in this respect, progress noted also by the European Commission in their periodical reports that monitor evolution registered in Romania in view of joining the European Union. Also, according to the European Parliament's report of December 2004, "The E.U. Parliament congratulates Romania on responding to international appeals and Parliament's request by introducing national child protection standards and strict rules to govern intercountry adoptions. It is considered that this new legislation framework should serve to protect children's rights even more effectively and must be properly enforced." Also, in May 2005, the E.U. Commission for Enlargement, Olli Rhen, wrote the Romanian Government as a response to the many requests of the government to really continue to look into the adoption issue and to I quote: "I take note of and appreciate your willingness to explore any possible solutions to respond to the various con cerns expressed, as long as such solutions are not contra- Taking into consideration the fact that foreign citizens applied for the adoption of Romanian children during the period when the moratorium on international adoption was in force, the Romanian Office for Adoptions decided to clarify the situation of those cases by analyzing each file, with the aim of ensuring that in each case respect of the rights of the child is beyond any doubt. This analysis is in due course and is performed by a national working group established in June 2005. It is composed of Romanian specialists with qualifications and responsibilities in the field of child protection, employed in several ministries and other central institutions. They are currently analyzing the existing files at the Romanian Office for Adoptions, as well as the information regarding the situation of each child considered in those files. The audit report will be finalized by the working group within 4 months from its setting up, probably in October 2005. Based on the results of this audit, suitable means will be identified, with the aim of finding the appropriate solutions for these cases. And I want to make a very brief comment of the importance of analyzing these files. The interim results-and we will probably have a full report, transparent report, of the final result, but the interim results show that while there are cases with strong bonds with families, some of them which I personally know here, there are also cases where children have been only viewed by photographs or videotapes, there were a number of children who were really requested, and there are even a number of cases where children returned to their national families. But, again, this is an audit that will be finalized in a couple of weeks, by next month. The Romanian Office for Adoptions will share the results of this domestic effort and consult with the European Union and other partners in compliance with Romania's-and we'd consult with the European Union-compliance with Romania's accession commitments, as well with American and other partners in a transparent manner. Romanians are engaged to address the issue of abandoned children within the framework of the present legislative framework, creating the premises for the prevention of abuse and corruption that may occur in the adoption system. All the institutions and public authorities involved in adoption procedures, as well as those with an important role in preventing child separation from his/her family, shall improve the functioning mechanism according to the new legislation, in view of respecting and guaranteeing the rights of the child. Mr. Chairman, in Romanian culture and tradition, such as in the cultures of many other nations, children represent the supreme |