Making Legal Regimes for Inter-country Adoption Reflect Human Rights Principles: Transforming the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child with the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption

Abstract

This 2003 article helped to reconfigure the international adoption debate in fundamental human rights terms. The article begins by noting the confusing ideological conflict surrounding the adoption question, and notes that the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption did little by itself to answer the question of what human rights law demanded for the many children living out of parental care.

The article takes on the flaws inherent in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on the issue of alternative care for children living without their original families. It explores how the Hague Convention might transform national approaches to inter-country adoption such that the UN children's rights establishment would have no further need to oppose international adoption in the manner they have to date.

The article argues, importantly, that there is an urgent need to create a disinterested, expert group of persons to count and account for the often hidden population of children living out of parental care, to ensure that national governments are acting in a manner consistent with the genuine rights of these children.