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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Intercountry Adoption And Poverty: A Human Rights Analysis, David M. Smolin
Intercountry Adoption And Poverty: A Human Rights Analysis, David M. Smolin
David M. Smolin
This Article explores the question of whether intercountry adoption is an effective, appropriate, or ethical response to poverty in developing nations. As a matter of methodology, this fundamental question of adoption ethics is explored through the lens of international human rights law. This Article specifically argues that, where the birth parents live under or near the international poverty standard of $1 per day, family preservation assistance must be provided or offered as a condition precedent for accepting a relinquishment that would make the child eligible for intercountry adoption.
Child Laundering As Exploitation: Applying Anti-Trafficking Norms To Intercountry Adoption Under The Coming Hague Regime, David M. Smolin
Child Laundering As Exploitation: Applying Anti-Trafficking Norms To Intercountry Adoption Under The Coming Hague Regime, David M. Smolin
David M. Smolin
Child laundering occurs when children are illicitly obtained by fraud, force, or funds, and then processed through false paperwork into "orphans" and then adoptees. Child laundering thus involves illegally obtaining children by abduction, fraud, or purchase for purposes of adoption. My prior work has documented and analyzed the widespread existence of child laundering in the intercountry adoption system. This article argues that child laundering is a form of exploitation, and hence qualifies as a form of human trafficking. Once child laundering is understood as an exploitative form of child trafficking, legal and ethical norms currently applied to human trafficking become …
Child Laundering: How The Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes And Incentivizes The Practices Of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, And Stealing Children, David M. Smolin
David M. Smolin
This article documents and analyzes a substantial incidence of "child laundering" within the intercountry adoption system. Child laundering occurs when children are taken illegally from birth families through child buying or kidnapping, and then "laundered" through the adoption system as "orphans" and then "adoptees." The article then proposes reforms to the intercountry adoption system that could substantially reduce the incidence of child laundering.