Fraud and deceit at the heart of Uganda adoptions to United States

Adoptionland NewsAdoption Trafficking, Agency Complaints, Excerpts

LONDON/KAMPALA, May 28 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Ugandan families have been bribed, tricked or coerced into giving up their children to U.S. citizens and other foreigners for adoption, a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation has found. Leaked documents, court data and a series of exclusive interviews with officials, whistleblowers, victims and prospective adoptive parents has revealed: – a culture of corruption in which …

Taken and never returned: When adoption profits the middleman

holtproductAdoption Trafficking, Rights, Videos

Many children in Uganda are taken to Europe and the United States of America for adoption every year by guardians who pay local law firms and agencies between four to nine million shillings. The law firms and agencies have consequently turned adoption into a profitable business. Many of the Ugandan parents do not understand everything in the documents they sign to …

Zoe’s Ark: Charity or child trafficking

holtproductAdoption Trafficking, Videos

Zoe’s Ark Zoe’s Ark was a French NGO dedicated to helping orphaned children affected by armed conflict or natural disaster and launched in response to the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. By 2007 the focus shifted to Darfur. In October 2007, Chadian authorities nabbed six Zoe’s Ark workers for attempting to evacuate 103 children to France. The workers claimed they were rescuing …

Adoption or Trafficking? Fears grow for Uganda’s ‘orphans’

Adoptionland NewsAdoption Trafficking, Excerpts, Rights

By Amy Fallon Mpigi (Uganda) (AFP) – When Agatha Namusisi, 64, let her grandson leave Uganda for medical treatment abroad, she assumed he would return, but more than a year later she says he has disappeared.  “They are nowhere to be seen,” Namusisi said of the seven-year-old boy and his Ugandan carer who travelled together to the United States in …

USA pushes Congo to allow adoptions despite trafficking fears

Adoptionland NewsAdoption Trafficking, Excerpts

A Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation in May found that child traffickers bribed, tricked and coerced Ugandan families into giving up their children for adoption. NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Legislators in the United States are lobbying the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to give 400 adopted children exit visas, after it suspended international adoptions because of fears …