A local adoption occurs when a child of Thais that is adopted within Thailand usually to Thais. This is much easier than the second kind and usually does not involve a lot of money. Often a parent of the child is available or can be found and signs off the adoption. Since adoption is a legal transaction, there is no way the government cannot be involved, usually at the provincial level. It’s pretty clean and relatively easy with everyone working for the good of the child, at least in our experiences.

International adoptions are another thing entirely. There are not a lot of these, numbers I have are 69 children in 2004, 59 in 2008. (You can check for various Thailand adoption regulations.) As in all international adoptions, a lot of money, at least by Thai standards, is involved. This invites abuses of the system. Lawyers, tests, interviews, pre placement reports, post placement reports, etc. I can’t blame the government for not wanting this process to go off the rails in any way, whether government corruption, abusive adoptive parents, or anything else that the tabloid news just loves to put in headlines.

After running across the CNN article, I looked a little more and found a blog article written in February 2009 which tells much the same thing, citing Guatemala as a worst case of international adoption abuse. Because of the article length I reproduce here its short comment about Thailand:

Given this article’s anti international adoption stance, that is high praise. In fact, if I had to pick a country that comes out looking best in this particular article, it would be Thailand. It also talks about abuses of the system in nearby Cambodia, some of which was ended with reforms in 2001.

There are cases, although not many, that clearly allow for international adoption in Thailand. One is if the baby was abandoned and no relatives at all can be found. If the parents have died and there are no relatives who can or want to take in the child is another. Actually, the quote above implies that a birth mother, after counseling, can still decide to give up a baby. This is maybe a third. I need to check, but I’m pretty sure the government would check that she would get no incentive other than knowledge of a good home for her child. One more case can be the “failed” village abortion, where at times it is established that the mother (if still alive) REALLY does not want the child. In all of this there is also the assumption that no qualified family can be found in Thailand.

Child adoption is by no means our major activity at Opportunity Foundation, but we can be involved in it. We are preparing to assist the Thai government in caring for pre adoption children. This would avoid a stay of a year or more in the government orphanages which just cannot give the level of care we can. We hope to avoid developmental and other issues that can come with living in larger institutions. Don’t ask us about adopting a child, however! That is still done through the government and those NGO’s so empowered. We do not influence that process.

The Thai government keeps tight control over international adoptions, and from what I have learned, they need to. I would like to see some streamlining of the process so children do not have to be held so long, even if by us, before adoption can occur.