What is an Illegal or Illicit Intercountry Adoption? | InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)

Statement by the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Ms Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, in her speech to the United Nations in March 2017:

All adoptions which result from the commission of crimes such as the abduction, sale and trafficking of children, and from illicit practices such as lack of proper informed consent by biological parents, improper financial gain by intermediaries and related corruption, are illegal, and must be prohibited, criminalised and sanctioned as such by all Member States.

An intercountry adoption can appear to have followed a legal process involving an agency, court, government authority, passport and adoption order – while still involving serious wrongdoing in the way the child was obtained, relinquished, transferred or approved.

The important question is therefore not only:

“Was there a legal adoption order?”

but also:

“What happened before and during the adoption process?”

International standards recognise that adoption can involve illegal acts such as abduction, sale, fraud and bribery, as well as illicit practices such as improper financial gain, inadequate consent, failure to support families, or failure to properly search for a child’s family.

These practices may breach criminal law, human rights obligations or international adoption safeguards even where the adoption was formally processed and approved.

The purpose of these definitions is not to require adoptees or families to prove that a crime occurred. They are intended to help identify practices, irregularities and concerns that may have occurred within an adoption.

Illegal adoption

An illegal adoption involves conduct such as abduction, sale, fraud, coercion, deception or bribery in obtaining, relinquishing, transferring or approving a child for adoption.

Examples include:

Abduction or unlawful removal
A child is taken from a hospital, home, neighbourhood or other place without lawful authority and placed with another family.
Payment to obtain a child
Money, valuables or another benefit are offered to persuade a parent or family to relinquish, transfer or consent to the adoption of a child.
Fraud or misrepresentation
A family is deceived about what will happen to their child. For example, being told the child will receive education or temporary care when the actual intention is permanent adoption.
Sale or transfer of a child
A child is transferred between individuals, intermediaries, institutions or agencies in exchange for money or another benefit.
Consent obtained without proper information
A parent signs or agrees to adoption without receiving accurate counselling about what adoption means, including that it may permanently end the legal relationship with their child.
Bribery or corruption
Officials or intermediaries receive improper payments to approve documents, adoption decisions or international travel, or to overlook unlawful practices.

Adoptive parents may be completely unaware that any of these practices occurred. Payments described as legitimate “adoption fees”, for example, may have been used improperly without their knowledge.

Illicit practices in adoption

Illicit practices are actions or systemic practices that undermine the safeguards designed to protect children and families.

They may occur within an adoption that appears, on paper, to have been legally processed.

Examples include:

Poverty leading to adoption without family support
A family relinquishes a child because of poverty but is offered adoption rather than practical or financial assistance that might allow the family to remain together.
Excessive or improper fees
Agencies, orphanages, lawyers, officials, social workers or other intermediaries receive payments that are excessive compared with reasonable local costs.
Failure to consider family or local care
Kinship care, family reunification, domestic adoption or other appropriate care within the child’s country are not genuinely explored before intercountry adoption.
Intercountry adoption being favoured over local adoption
Laws, policies, financial incentives or demand make overseas adoption easier or more attractive than finding appropriate care for the child within their own country.
Adoption during war, disaster or crisis
Children are adopted while families are displaced or separated and authorities cannot reliably establish whether parents or relatives are alive, searching for the child, or able to resume care.
Failure to search for a child’s family
A lost, abandoned or separated child is declared available for adoption without reasonable efforts being made to identify or locate parents or relatives.

Why the distinction matters

Illegal acts and illicit practices often overlap.

For example, excessive fees may create financial incentives to obtain more children for adoption. Poor family tracing may allow a child with living relatives to be classified as an orphan. Inadequate counselling may produce a signed consent document even though the parent did not understand that adoption would permanently sever their legal relationship with their child.

This is why legal paperwork alone does not necessarily show that an adoption was free from wrongdoing.

The adoption may have been formally approved, yet the circumstances that made the child available for adoption may still have involved serious violations of the child’s and family’s rights.

International standards

These concerns are reflected in international instruments including:

the Convention on the Rights of the Child
the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children
the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption
the Enforced Disappearances Convention
the Palermo Protocol on trafficking

Together, these frameworks emphasise that children must be protected from sale, trafficking, abduction, improper financial gain and other practices that undermine genuine consent and the safeguards surrounding adoption.

At the centre of all of these concerns is the child, the adoptee.

The question is not simply whether an adoption was completed legally on paper, but whether the child’s rights, identity, family relationships and protections were respected throughout the entire process.