Ethiopia Moves to Sharply Reduce Foreign Adoptions

These are not the words you want to read in the headlines. But on March 10, that is exactly the headline as it read in an article published by the Associated Press. Follow the hyperlink to the original story.

In a nutshell, the Department of State (DOS) said that Ethiopia announced that it is implementing changes that could reduce the number of foreign adoptions by up to 90%. They went on to warn that pending applications to adopt from Ethiopia could be delayed significantly, perhaps up to six months or more. Basically, Ethiopia's new policy calls for its Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs to process no more than five adoption cases per day. Up until Thursday, they had been processing up to 50 per day.

Nobody really knows how this is going to affect waiting families, but it's not good news. Our agency--and all international adoption agencies in Ethiopia--are scrambling to assess what the impact will be. DOS says that the reason given for implementing the reduction was for the Ministry, with its limited resources, to improve its screening of each case, to reduce or eliminate fraud and trafficking. The Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS), which represents many U.S. adoption agencies, calls the plan "a tragic, unnecessary and disproportionate reaction to concerns of isolated abuses."

There is no silver lining on this. But if there is any comfort to be had in all this, it is that we have a referral and a court date. If we did not have a referral, prospects would be very, very grim and we would be in total despair. If we had referral but no court date, we would be pretty depressed. But we're already matched and we were assigned a court date before this announcement was made. So we find some comfort in that, but we are devastated for all those other waiting families that aren't as far in the process as we are.

However, we don't know if our court date will stand. Our agency had instructed us to hold off on booking our flight until they finalize our meeting and court itineraries. And now this news complicates things. Meanwhile, we are proceeding with our travel planning. Our neighbors across the street are from Ethiopia and are giving us some guidance, getting all the necessary vaccinations and doing travel research to figure out our trip. We know we want to take the opportunity to get to know our son's country of origin while we're over there.

This is all pretty new and it is an ever-changing process. Uncharted territory. Nobody knows anything, but we're trying to keep abreast of all the changes and will keep you posted, too.