ICAV has long spoken out against illegal, illicit, and rights-abusive intercountry adoptions. This global collection of resources is curated for policymakers, professionals, families, adoptees, and allies to better understand the complex, systemic nature of these practices.
International Bodies and Publications
United Nations
Joint Statement on Illegal Intercountry Adoption (2022)
Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH)
Toolkit for Preventing and Addressing Illicit Practices in Intercountry Adoption (2023)
Abduction, Sale and Traffic in Children in the context of intercountry adoption (2010)
Guide to Good Practice 1 (2008) and Guide to Good Practice 2 (2012)
Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)
IPU Resolution 2022 (unofficial English translation) and IPU Resolution Accepted on Orphanage Trafficking (2023): The role of parliaments in reducing harm
IPU Resolution on Intercountry Adoption (2025): Recognising and supporting the victims of illegal international adoption and taking measures to prevent this practice.
Country Investigations & Reports
Adoptive Countries
Reports released by Governments after formal inquiries, in order of when the reports were released
Netherlands (2021)
Official Report and Summary and unofficial English Report and unofficial English Summary
Belgium (2021)
Official Flemish report and unofficial English report
France (2023)
Official French report and official English report
Denmark (2024)
Official website : media report: Study will investigate only 10 out of 69 countries
Official Adoption report on Korean adoptions only and unofficial English report
Sweden (2025)
Official Swedish inquiry website
Reports: Volume 1 and Volume 2 and unofficial English translation of press conference
Unofficial translations to English of Swedish Reports Volume 1 (part 1, part 2, part 3) and Volume 2 (part 1, part 2, part 3)
Switzerland (2025)
Swiss Expert Group interim report 2023 and unofficial English translation
Swiss Expert Group Final Report 2024 and unofficial English translation
Evidence of Illegal adoptions of children from Ten Countries of origin in Switzerland (2023) and unofficial English translation
Swiss report on Indian adoptions (2024) by the University of St Gallen and official English translation
Adoptions of children from Sri Lanka to Swizterland, 1973 – 1997 (2020) and unofficial English translation
Norway (2025)
Norwegian Investigation Committee website
Budfir Recommends Temporary Suspension of Adoptions (2024) and unofficial English translation
Decision to not suspend adoptions (2024)
Official interim report on Ecuador and Colombia only and unofficial English translation
Quebec (2025)
Suspension of all new intercountry adoption applications
Australia (2025)
South Korea: Re-election promise to investigate South Korea’s adoptions
Birth Countries
Chile
Special Commission to Investigate the Actions of State Agencies Regarding Potential Irregularities in Adoption and Registration Processes for Minors, and Monitoring Their Departure from the Country (2019) website and official report and unofficial English translation
Annual Report (2023) Human Rights Situation in Chile (Chapter 6 looks at The Right to Identity and Family Coexistence in the Face of Irregular Kidnappings and Adoptions of Children in Chile) and unofficial English translation of Chapter 6
Guatemala
Formal apology (2024)
South Korea
TRC2 Report (English) – Human Violations in Intercountry Adoption (Nov 2025)
Official Korean Truth and Reconciliation press conference website with Press Release ( Mar 2025)
Documentaries
All Countries
International adoptions – a global scandal (2025) the original French ARTE version is 1.5hrs long with English subtitles (contact ICAV if you wish to view this)
Bangladesh
How adoptees from Bangladesh search for their past (2025)
Chile
De Stulna Barnen (in Swedish, The stolen children) exploring Chile’s stolen children taken to Sweden (2021)
China
The hidden victims of China’s One Child Policy (2025)
One Child Nation (2020)
India
The big adoption theft (2024) in Danish
Italy
Vatican sent Italian children born out of wedlock to America as orphans (2025)
Il Mio Posto A Tavola (My place at the table, 2025)
Mali
Adoptions in Mali, a rediscovered past (2024)
South Korea
Korea’s adoption reckoning (2024) Frontline’s 1.5hr long documentary covering input from over 80 Korean adoptees around the world, published at the end of a huge 8 part AP media print series.
Korea’s fake orphans: how adoptions to USA and Sweden tore families apart, “one orphan every hour” (2025)
South Korea’s House of Horror (2021) covering the Brother’s Home where some intercountry adoptees came from before adoption
The Echoes of Survivors (2025) Episode 1 & 2 covering the Brother’s Home
Sri Lanka
Adoption Fraud at Baby Farms (2017)
Confronting the painful secrets of international adoption: Sri Lanka to Norway (2023)
Lived Experience
Victims of illegal intercountry adoption speak out at the UN – ICAV paper and videos (2023)
Lived experience of illicit and illegal adoption – ICAV webinar (2021)
Lived experience suggestions for responses to illicit adoptions : prepared for the Hague – ICAV paper (2020)
Intercountry adoptee rights charter (2025)
Academic Research
Susan Branco: False Narratives – Illicit practices in Colombian transnational adoption (2022)
Atamhi Cawayu: Searching for Restoration: an ethnographic study of transnational adoption from Bolivia (2023)
Chandra Kala Clemente-Martínez: Special Issue: Irregularities in Transnational Adoptions and Child Appropriations – Challenges for Reparation Practices (2021) and Irregular adoptions in the Ethiopian-Spanish context: Strategies to redress the adoption triad (2024)
Patricia Fronek, Denise Cuthbert, Indigo Willing: Intercountry adoption – privilege, rights and social justice (book chapter 13, 2015)
Olivier de Frouville: Obligations of States to prosecute illegal adoptions as crimes against humanity and/or enforced disappearances under international law (2025 Working Paper)
Tobias Hubinette: The Swedish adoption world and the process of coming to terms with transnational adoption (2025); Sweden at a crossroad: the struggle for finding the truth about transnational adoption in the world’s leading adopting nation (2024); From Orphan Trains to Babylifts: Colonial Trafficking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering (2006)
Elvira Loibl: Child Trafficking for adoption purposes – a criminological analysis of the illegal adoption market (2019)
Patrick Noordoven: Intercountry Adoption and the Right to Identity: The Application of the Subsidiarity Principle in Brazil (2019)
Jini Roby (2009): Human Rights, Politics & Intercountry Adoption: An Examination of Two Sending Countries; Illicit Intercountry Adoption Practices: Sale of Children or Trafficking in Persons?; Human rights considerations in intercountry adoption – the children and families of Cambodia and Marshall Islands (book chapter); From Rhetoric to Best Practice: children’s rights in intercountry adoption (2007); Birth parents as victims of trafficking in intercountry adoption.
David Smolin: Child Laundering – how the intercountry adoption system legitimizes and incentivizes the practices of buying, trafficking, kidnapping, and stealing children (2006)
Books
China
Barbara Demick: Daughters of the bamboo grove (2025)
Guatemala
Mariela SR Coline Fanon: Maman, je ne suis pas morte (Mum, I’m not dead, 2021, in Spanish)
Erin Siegal: The US Embassy Cables: adoption fraud in Guatemala 1987 – 2010 (2011) and Finding Fernanda – Two mothers, one child, and a crossborder search for truth (2012)
Indonesia
Dewi Deijle: Postpakketjes Van Overzee (Postal Package from Overseas: legalised child trafficking in adoption of children from Indonesia, in Dutch) and in English (2020)
Italy
Maria Laurino: The Price of Children – Stolen lives in a land without choice (2025) about Italian intercountry adoptees sent to the USA between 1950 – 1970
Multiple Countries
Elvira Loibl: Facing the Past: Policies and Good Practices for Responses to Illegal Intercountry Adoptions (2024) and The transnational illegal adoption market: a criminological study of the German and Dutch intercountry adoption systems (2019)
Patrik Lundberg: Adoptionerna (2022) – (The Adoptions, in Swedish) a journalistic investigation delving into the history of suspected crimes linked to international adoptions to Sweden
South Korea
Hosu Kim: Birth mothers and transnational adoption practice in South Korea (2016)
Kyung-eun Lee: Rights to Origins is a Human Right (2024) and The Global Orphan System: South Korea’s impact on its origin and development (2021)
Vietnam
Erika Hayasaki: Somewhere sisters – a story of adoption, identity, and the meaning of family (2023)
Other Resources
Nigel Cantwell: The Sale of Children and Illegal Adoption (2017)
E J Graff conducted a large investigation into international adoption fraud and corruption by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. The live we love (2009), Anatomy of an adoption crisis (2010)