Tag Archives: international adoption

Book: Fugitive Visions

By Guest Blogger Leanne Leith Ahh, another self-portrait. This time it’s 5:30 a.m. in Seoul, S. Korea, and I’m waiting for the first train of the morning. I’m reading Jane Jeong Trenka’s new work, “Fugitive Visions,” and it’s disjointed nature perfectly describes adoptedness. How I felt growing up in the midwest. How I struggled [...]
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INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION Child Protection or a Breach of Rights?

Author Roelie Post wants to distance herself from pro and anti-adoption labels and direct the discussion back to the heart of the matter: whether intercountry adoption is a child protection measure, if children have rights in their own country, and if intercountry adoption is ultimately a breach of such right. Read the entire article: INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION Child [...]
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The Price We All Pay: Human Trafficking in International Adoption

Kevin Minh Allen, a Vietnamese adoptee, explores ways to address adoption human trafficking. These include, but are not limited to, having the U.S. government sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and diverting funds away from the adoption industry and into worthwhile child welfare programs in the home countries. The Price We All [...]
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Abuses in adoptions from S. Korea

This past May, South Korea — renowned within adoption circles for its transparent and above-board practices — was taken to task by the committee on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Geneva. The committee said there is “a possibility of abuse” in intercountry adoptions from South Korea. On Nov. 10, 2009, a coalition [...]
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EDITORIAL International Adoption and the Fight for Human Rights

Adult international adoptees have begun participating in a debate over whose best interests the practice actually serves, or should serve: the adopter or the adoptee? Hilbrand Westra, chairman of United Adoptees International, takes a critical look at the practice of international adoption and lays out how international law can help us fight child trafficking. Read Entire [...]
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Transnational Adoption and the “Financialization of Everything”

International adoption is often seen as a mutually beneficial relationship between children in need of a home and financially stable adults wanting to raise a child. But it is also big-money business. Jane Jeong Trenka, author and co-founder of Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK), forms a small policy institute with [...]
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The narrative of international adoption

Bert Ballard, a Vietnamese adoptee and adoption advocate, writes about some of his struggles with adopting a son from Vietnam. Read what Ballard sees as eight important characteristics that can be identified in today’s emerging narrative of international adoption: it is inclusive, allows for multiple paths, explicates economics, is critical, offers complex solutions, values the [...]
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What does “Gotcha” mean?

November is National Adoption Month. What would such a celebration of adoption, whether in the U.S. or another country, mean to my Korean birthmother? At the time my mother became a “birthmother,” I was six months old, and my sister was four years old. Because she passed away about nine years ago, I will take the [...]
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