On May 21, a number of us presented in a global 2-part webinar on the topic of Preventing & Responding to Illicit Intercountry Adoptions. The webinar was a joint collaboration between Child Identity Protection (CHIP), ICAV, The Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures, & UNICEF.
I highly recommend adoptee leaders listen to the first 20 minute talks from both Ann Skelton (former Chairperson of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNCRC) and Olivier Frouville (current Vice Chair, former Chairperson, of the Convention of Enforced Disappearances, UNCED). They provide us some excellent information on pathways our communities can take via the UN for seeking truth, justice and reparation. We certainly have them as allies helping with our push of States to step up and take responsibility for creating pathways for justice, truth and reparation.
Part 1
Ann Skelton talks about how to utilise the UNCRC Optional Protocol Communications Procedure pathway.
Olivier Frouville talks on how to utilise the UN Convention of Enforced Disappearances pathway but he didn’t get to finish as his internet cut out. You can find his paper that details in-depth what was missed from the recording.
I present from a global perspective and what needs to be done for us since these investigations. My speech has additions here in text because of the time limit. It is important to talk about prevention from recurrence.
Peter Regel Møller & Boonyoung Han presented on South Korea and the TRC.
Joëlle Schickel-Küng presented as the Swiss Central Authority on how Switzerland has responded as an adoptive country.
Good day to you all and thank you to Mia, Nigel and the CHIP team for the opportunity to speak today. I want to especially thank both Olivier and Ann for championing our fight with CHIP in this webinar, it has been significant for us as victims to be validated and supported in this way.
I’m Lynelle Long, born in Vietnam and taken to Australia as a 5 month old baby. I’m now in my early 50s and I still don’t have any adoption paperwork from Vietnam, only a passport with a name and date that is most likely falsified. I’ve spent over 45 years looking for the truth of who I am, hoping to find my origins but still remain without answers. I have spent years asking Vietnam to reissue me with a birth certificate in order to reclaim my Vietnamese citizenship but this has still not been possible. I need funds to pay for a lawyer in a country where I don’t speak the language. This gives you just one example of the many barriers that exist for me to even reclaim who I am in Vietnam. In Australia, I have taken certain legal action against my adoptive parents and I have annulled my adoption.
I will briefly speak about the growing international responses to historic illicit and illegal intercountry adoptions — but more importantly, what meaningful responses actually need to look like beyond the investigation phase.
Over the past decade, we have seen a major global shift. For many years, adoptees and first families who questioned their histories were often dismissed as isolated cases. But increasingly, governments and institutions are now being confronted with evidence of systemic problems within intercountry adoption systems. These include falsified identities and documentation, coercion of vulnerable mothers and families, child laundering, trafficking, financial incentives influencing adoption practices, failures to verify whether children were truly adoptable, and broader systemic failures in oversight and accountability.
As a result, a growing number of countries have now launched investigations and reviews into historic practices. The Netherlands was first in 2021, they conducted a major inquiry that ultimately led to the end of intercountry adoptions which is being phased out by 2030. Flemish part of Belgium was next and has become particularly important because reforms there have opened legal pathways allowing accountability for illegal adoption practices. The legal prosecution of a Congolese trafficker occurred in February this year, she was jailed for 14 years after abducting children and placing them for adoption as “orphans”. France, Sweden and Switzerland have each conducted an independent investigation and produced reports. Switzerland and France in particular became the first countries in the world to fund adoptee led search/reunion organisations to help adoptees in searching – this was for Sri Lankan and Ethiopian adoptees respectively. Norway is about to publish their review and report looking into past practices.
From a birth country perspective, Chile was way ahead of the times and investigated in 2019 but have failed so far to create a meaningful pathway for survivors and victims. In comparison, South Korea has included intercountry adoption in their Truth and Reconciliation process thanks to incredible work by adoptees Peter and Boonyoung who will present to you next. South Korea continues today to examine the historical role of the state and private actors in intercountry adoption.
In my own adoptive country Australia, we are the first country outside Europe to have our government run an investigation into historic intercountry adoptions – sadly they are limiting this to only the South Korea. Quebec is to be recognised for its proactiveness as they have been the first country outside Europe to place a moratorium on all intercountry adoptions .. and to my knowledge – this has been done without conducting a public investigation or initiated by adoptee advocacy. Quebec are currently reviewing their practices and policy, engaging adoptees and stakeholders in that process. Denmark is the first adoptive country in the world to attempt to investigate and report on all the countries they’ve adopted from – all 70 of them.
What is striking is that despite these different countries, languages, and time periods, remarkably similar patterns continue to emerge.
We repeatedly see falsified paperwork, children declared abandoned without proper verification, coercion of vulnerable mothers,
financial pressures, poor oversight, and systems driven more by demand for children than by protection of families and children. But I think we are now reaching a critical point internationally where the question is no longer simply, “Did illicit practices occur?” Increasingly, evidence shows they did.
The much larger question now is what happens after investigations?
Investigations alone do not restore identities. They do not reunite families or repair lifelong trauma and they do not automatically create accountability. So I would like to focus the remainder of my time on what meaningful responses actually need to look like in practice.
First, we need truth. What does truth mean to us adoptee survivors and victims?
Truth means independent investigations with real powers and transparency. It means unrestricted access to records and archives, reservation of documents rather than destruction or secrecy, it means states, institutions and our adoptive parents openly acknowledging harms rather than minimising them as isolated historical mistakes. For adoptees and first families, truth is often the foundation for understanding who we are, what happened to us, and why.
Second, we need identity restoration. Many adoptees like me live with falsified, incomplete or unknown identities. Some of us have incorrect birth dates, false abandonment stories, altered names, missing family histories, or severed citizenship and legal ties to our countries and families of origin.
Identity restoration must therefore include access to original records, DNA testing and family tracing, restoration of original names where desired, dual citizenship rights in both adoptive and birth countries, legal pathways to reverse illegal adoptions where impacted people desire this, and recognition that identity is a lifelong human right.
Third, we need long-term support. Too often intercountry adoption systems were designed around the placement of us assuming we remain children forever, with very little responsibility taken for our lifelong and multi generational outcomes. But adoptees and first families often continue living with grief, trauma, separation, racial isolation, mental health challenges, reunion complexities, legal insecurity, and financial burdens across our entire lives. This means supports must be lifelong, trauma-informed, culturally competent, equitable, free and accessible. It includes mental health support, search and reunion assistance, translation services,
legal support, return-to-country assistance, funded peer support, and support for first families – not only for adoptees.
Fourth, we need accountability and it cannot simply mean symbolic apologies. It must include legal and structural reform. Countries need legislation that criminalises illicit intercountry adoption practices, strengthens safeguards, and creates mechanisms to prosecute trafficking, document fraud, coercion, and corruption where they occurred. We also need systems that prevent recurrence. This means stronger oversight, independent monitoring, ethical accreditation systems, preservation of records,
and meaningful post-adoption accountability across the lifespan.
And importantly, we need recognition that states, institutions, and adoptive parents may carry responsibility for harms caused under past systems. That includes discussions around reparative justice and compensation because many adoptees and families of origin have personally borne enormous financial costs trying to recover truths and identities that should never have been taken from us in the first place. We pay for DNA testing, translations, legal representation, travel, therapy, family tracing, and citizenship restoration — all at our own expense. Compensation is not about assigning a monetary value to human suffering. It is about acknowledging responsibility and ensuring we are not left carrying alone the lifelong consequences of systemic failures.
(modified/added from what is in the recording due to time restriction)
And lastly, and most importantly, we must prevent future harm. Perhaps the greatest failure would be to acknowledge past wrongdoing, compensate those already harmed, yet continue operating essentially the same system that created those harms.
If investigations consistently identify the same systemic failures – document fraud, falsified identities, coercion, deception, child laundering and trafficking, then our responsibility is not simply to respond to those harms, but to ensure they cannot continue. That means being willing to ask difficult questions about whether the current intercountry adoption system, as it operates today, is capable of adequately protecting the rights of vulnerable children and families. If it cannot, then we must have the courage to fundamentally transform it. This is not about abandoning children but about designing a better system. One built on the lessons we have learned that places the rights of children at its centre while equally respecting the rights of first families and adoptive families. One that prioritises family preservation wherever possible, ensures adoption truly is a last resort, and creates safeguards strong enough to prevent exploitation before it occurs.
Achieving this will require international dialogue involving adoptees, first families, adoptive families, governments, child protection experts, human rights organisations and international bodies. Together, we need to ask if we were designing a system today, knowing everything we now know about past harms, what would it look like? Surely it would not be the same system that produced these repeated failures.
Finally, all of these responses must be shaped by those who have lived this experience. For too long, policies have been developed about adoptees and first families, rather than with them. Yet many of the investigations and reforms we now see exist because adoptees and first families spent decades documenting harms, organising internationally and demanding accountability. Our lived experience is not supplementary expertise – it is essential!
So as international conversations continue evolving, I believe the challenge before us is no longer simply how to investigate the past, it is how we transform the future. That means repairing the harms already done through truth, identity restoration, lifelong support, accountability and reparative measures. It also means preventing future harm through stronger laws, systemic transformation, and genuine partnership with those most affected. If we truly accept that these were human rights violations, then our measure of success will not be how well we investigate yesterday’s injustices but will be whether future generations of children and families never have to experience them.
Thank you so much for your time, and thanks again to CHIP for making this webinar possible.
Resources
For the full unedited recording and Part 2, listen here at CHIPs website
Investigations on Intercountry Adoption in the past decade
What happens after an adoption investigation?
Korea’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission initial outcome
Victims of illegal intercountry adoptions speak out at the UN