The legal, ethical and political implications of intercountry adoptions exploded into the American spotlight in 2009, when Nancy Hansen, an American adoptive grandmother from Tennessee, pinned a note on her daughter’s adopted 7-year-old Russian child, Artyom Savelyev, and booked him on a one-way flight back to Moscow (http://​abcnews.​go.​com/​International/​TheLaw/​russia-us-negotiate-adoption-agreement-wake-scandal/​story?​id=​0517181). In the note Hansen alleged that the boy suffered from “severe psychopathic issues” and that the family, fearful for its safety, “no longer wish[ed] to parent [him]” (http://​www.​cbsnews.​com/​news/​return-of-orphan-to-russia-sparks-uproar/​);http://​kunc.​org/​post/​contentious-system-hope-russian-orphan.

Expressions of Russian outrage swiftly followed and brought heightened international scrutiny to the process of intercountry adoption. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev described the grandmother’s actions as a “monstrous deed,” while Russian ministers threatened to ban outright all adoptions to the United States (http://​www.​forbes.​com/​sites/​dianeclehane/​2012/​05/​31/​u-s-mother-who-returned-her-adopted-son-to-russia-ordered-to-pay-child-support/​; http://​abcnews.​go.​com/​International/​TheLaw/​russia-us-negotiate-adoption-agreement-wake-scandal/​story?​id=​10517181). For a time it seemed some compromise might be reached: in late 2012, Russia and the United States entered into a bilateral agreement that would have maintained the flow of intercountry adoptions between the two countries, with Russia allowed greater supervisory rights over American families who adopted Russian children into the United States (http://​www.​state.​gov/​r/​pa/​prs/​ps/​2012/​10/​199322.​htm). The compromise was short-lived, however; only months after approving the agreement, Russian lawmakers announced yet another shift in Russia’s adoption policy and categorically banned placements of Russian children with U.S. families. Russian policymakers claimed that the embargo was made necessary by the Savelyev case and 19 other instances of alleged abuse. The United States dismissed the ban as a purely political maneuver—retaliation for the recently enacted Magnitsky Act, in which U.S. lawmakers imposed sanctions on a number of Russian officials for alleged human rights violations (http://​www.​cnn.​com/​2012/​12/​28/​world/​europe/​russia-us-adoptions/​index.​html;http://​www.​cnn.​com/​2012/​12/​19/​world/​russia-adoption-u-s-ban/​index.​html).

Whatever the cause, the outcome is not disputed: over the last year the flow of Russian children to American homes has slowed to a trickle, leaving some 600,000 Russian children in need of permanent homes—pawns in a game of international politics in which the players all claim to be acting in the best interests of the children, but which children seem invariably to lose (http://​www.​usatoday.​com/​story/​news/​world/​2013/​07/​03/​russia-putin-gay-adoption/​2486913/​).

The dispute with Russia is but one example in a long history of political maneuvering over intercountry adoption policy. Indeed, tensions often seem inevitable, as any country with a sizeable pool of unparented children is likely suffering from the kinds of systemic economic and social failures that the responsible policymakers would prefer to keep out of the international spotlight. That being said, however, many governments have also regarded intercountry adoption as a desirable tool for easing the plight of parentless children, particularly in the wake of war or natural disaster. It was in the aftermath of the Korean War, for example, that adoption first came to be viewed in America as a potential remedy for the extreme poverty of parentless children overseas. News of wartime GI babies orphaned in the streets of Korean villages inspired many American couples to consider adoption for the first time, and the contemporaneous establishment in the 1950s of international adoption agencies, like Holt International, spurred the development of intercountry adoption markets—markets that brought with them all the good and bad players that unregulated (and potentially lucrative) markets tend to attract (http://​www.​hcch.​net/​index_​en.​php?​act=​conventions.​text&​cid=​69; Nelson 2007).

Strong growth in the adoption of international children by American families continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, reaching a peak (22,991 adoptions) in 1984 and then plateauing at somewhat lower levels throughout the 1990s as Russia and China began opening their doors to foreign placements (http://​articles.​chicagotribune.​com/​2013-04-02/​news/​ct-x-foreign-adoption-20130402_​1_​adoption-rules-foreign-adoption-judy-stigger;http://​www.​cnn.​com/​2013/​09/​16/​world/​international-adoption-main-story-decline/​index.​html;http://​www.​statistics.​adoption.​com/​information/​adoption-statistics-international.​html). Although this tremendous growth helped many children to escape poverty, disease and neglect, it also transformed the field of international adoption into big business. In certain parts of the developing world children came to be viewed by some as commodities, chattel that could be traded for the benefit of desperate parents or cash-strapped governments. The dearth of international regulations created a murky world into which these orphans too often disappeared, and it soon became clear that the world’s good intentions were having the opposite of their desired effect—demand was creating supply (http://​www.​economist.​com/​node/​15469423). Children were being abducted from their parents, often by deception, sometimes by force, and trafficked through government middlemen to rich families in first-world nations like the United States. Although the U.S. periodically sought to counter the demand side of the equation by prohibiting adoptions from problem countries, critics insisted that multinational reforms were required to increase transparency, improve communication, and establish uniform standards by which the ethics and legality of intercountry child placements could be measured and regulated (http://​www.​csmonitor.​com/​The-Culture/​Family/​2014/​0321/​Why-are-foreign-adoptions-in-the-US-on-the-decline;http://​www.​cnn.​com/​2013/​09/​16/​world/​international-adoption-main-story-decline/​index.​html).

The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation of Inter-Country Adoption (the “Hague Convention”) was conceived as a mechanism to address these concerns—to establish minimum regulatory standards, to prevent the abduction, sale, and trafficking of children, to open lines of communication between the home and adoptive countries, and to ensure transparency and accountability from both governments and the agencies designated to process adoptions on their behalf (Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation of Inter-Country Adoption 1993 ). Concluded in 1993, the Hague Convention has been adopted by 90 countries, including the United States, which became a signatory in 1994. After ratification in 2007, the Hague Convention became effective in the U.S. on April 1, 2008 (http://​adoption.​state.​gov/​hague_​convention/​overview.​php).

Any assessment of international adoption requirements must begin with a determination of whether the child’s home country is a member state of the Hague Convention . A current list of member states can be found on the U.S. Department of State website (http://​adoption.​state.​gov/​hague_​convention/​countries.​php). Prospective parents should also be aware that a number of nations (e.g., Ghana, Bhutan, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Rwanda) have suspended adoptions to American parents, and that the United States has ceased to accept adopted children from a number of others (e.g., Cambodia, Montenegro, and Vietnam) (http://​www.​cnn.​com/​2013/​09/​16/​world/​international-adoption-main-story– decline/index.html). If adoption is sought from a non-Convention state (e.g., Haiti, Nepal, and Korea), the Convention’s standards do not apply, and prospective parents will need to look to the laws of the home country to ascertain the applicable requirements. A chart detailing and comparing the requirements of member and non-member states can also be found on the State Department website (http://​adoption.​state.​gov/​hague_​convention/​hague_​vs_​nonhague.​php).

At the heart of the Hague Convention is the requirement that member nations establish safeguards to ensure that intercountry adoptions are undertaken in the best interest of the child (Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation of Inter-Country Adoption 1993 ) The agreement sets forth a number of specific requirements to meet this mandate. It recognizes, for example, that the child’s best interests are served by placement within the biological family or within the home country (Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation of Inter-Country Adoption 1993 ). Only if no suitable placement can be found in the home country do authorities proceed to determine whether intercountry adoption is in the child’s best interest (Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation of Inter-Country Adoption 1993 ). The child’s fundamental rights are further protected during the intercountry adoption process by requiring informed consent, after counseling, not only of all persons, institutions, and authorities involved in the approval process, but also of the children, whose wishes and opinions are to be taken into account in proportion to their age and maturity (Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation of Inter-Country Adoption 1993 ). The adoption is only finalized if the child is judged to be adoptable, the prospective parents are deemed eligible, and the home country determines that the match is suitable. (Hague Convention, Art. 5. 1993; Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention—Outline 1993)