Research on behalf of Flemish Government on the child’s right to identity in intercountry adoption
Child Identity Protection is honoured to be collaborating with the Flemish Government in the context of its reforms for the procedure for intercountry adoptions to Flanders. The decision to reform was a result of the findings of a panel of experts, set up in 2019, on the current intercountry adoption procedure (report released in August 2021). This report contains 20 recommendations for the future and 9 recommendations for the past. The recommendations constitute an important impetus to a necessary paradigm shift in intercountry adoption. The panel, among others, recommends that the Flemish Government should draw up a concrete action plan based on the recommendations on order to ensure that future intercountry adoptions are conducted correctly and ethically by fundamentally reforming the current adoption system. One of the recommendations for the future concerns an assessment of risks of the cooperation the Flemish Central Authority for Intercountry Adoption has with states of origin and a stricter control on subsidiarity and adoptability in states of origin. To this end, the Flemish Government has mandated Child Identity Protection to undertake research on “origins” questions for 21 countries in terms of laws, policies and practices, as well as how the States of origin are handling illicit practices.
