One out of every four children in Liberia lives in extreme poverty. This is the result of Liberia’s civil war, deplorable social, economic and environmental conditions, which have deprived Liberian children of protection and fundamental human rights. Throughout the civil crisis, and again during the post-conflict era, these conditions made the plight of unparented Liberian children visible to the world, and forced many persons in advanced countries into action based on humanitarian ground. This author believes that the solution to this problem is to support the adoption of all unparented children in Liberia. Adoption provides that solution because it provides for the nurturing and caring of unparented children. Whether domestic or inter-country, adoption offers the permanent placement for orphaned, abandoned, vulnerable and street children in homes with loving families.
With the brutalities of the civil war behind us, adoption presents itself as a viable option for Liberians seeking a bright future for unparented children. Nurturing and caring for unparented children is an invaluable exercise of unconditional love demonstrated by individuals desiring to expand their families and provide a safe home for a child. Of course, the biggest obstacle to the fulfillment of children’s rights in Liberia is poverty. Yet, as we know, Liberia’s government is in no position to provide even the basic nurturing and care needed for Liberia’s unparented children. Obviously, therefore, poverty remains fundamentally the root cause of the conditions that limit our ability to improve the living standards of the Liberian child.
While it is true that adoption is among the oldest and most rewarding of human practices, its expansion into the international arena is in fact the least understood for many Liberians. As such, it is not without controversy that individuals who do not fully understand its complexities hold positions that do more harm than good to the debate on adoption. The result is that the vexing social conditions of Liberia’s unparented children have received rhetorical rather than practical solutions.
Traditionally, Liberians will assume responsibility for a relative’s child when that relative dies or is incapacitated. This is the principal form of adoption known to most Africans. Here, an adopted child is always a relative who is treated more as a ward than as a natural child. There are other forms of adoption, including inter-country adoption, which is similar to the latter except that individuals automatically assume responsibility for a child not related to them. In this case, the adopted child is viewed and treated as if he or she were a natural child. In addition, inter-country adoption allows children to accrue rights and privileges that pertain to an individual’s natural-born child including the right of inheritance and all other duties and privileges that pertain to a natural-born child.
Over the past 20 years, Inter-country adoption became widely known to ordinary Liberians. For most, it is an essential method of serving the needs of orphaned, abandoned, unparented and street children. On the one hand, while it is an effective means for combating malnutrition, disease, poverty and illiteracy, it is, on the other hand, a remedy for the desperate state of uncertainty and embarrassment generated by the plight of the Liberian child. Overcoming this uncertainty and embarrassment requires sustained international goodwill and intervention. Liberia’s unparented children could not survive without international intervention. However, beyond its instrumental utility as a humanitarian intervention, inter-country adoption provides hope for many unparented Liberian children born into a difficult reality of poverty, disease and war. It offers countless opportunities with great possibilities for many unparented Liberian children who are facing the future with severe test with issues of respect, dignity, opportunity and protection.
According to UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, more than 300,000 children in Liberia are unparented due to the war, death, or abandonment. Many live in desperately inadequate orphanage conditions, on the streets or in urban homes as domestics performing housework in exchange for food and basic protection from the streets. As a matter of personal wellbeing, this form of support may be appreciated but it is grossly inadequate. The UNICEF report shows both real and potential risks for Liberia’s unparented children.
In a 2008 UN report, 500,000 children in Liberia are not regularly enrolled in school; and, of the 300,000 that are enrolled in school, a staggering 40% are without qualified teachers, proper supervision, not to mention instructional materials. The World Health Organization (WHO) has documented that over 37% of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, while 7% suffer from acute malnutrition, leaving one in five children underweight in Liberia. The report further states that more than 25% of children in Liberia under five die each year from malnutrition, lack of clean drinking water, and preventable and treatable diseases, including garbage-borne diseases that result from poor hygiene, while 75% of children die from waterborne diseases and lack of access to adequate toilets. The report concludes that the lack of adequate healthcare, difficulties accessing education, employment and social marginalization cause many children to live in total destitution.
To this author, these conditions will cause Liberia to fall further behind in its development efforts if we do nothing to support the adoption of children, especially unparented children who suffer these conditions. This author’s case is that despite Liberia’s traditional kinship, foster-care, or extended family system of care-giving—a much needed service to children—little will be lost if we embrace inter-country adoption as a solution to supplement the traditional system of care-giving. In the past, orphaned, abandoned children or others who could not be cared for by their birthparents were taken in by relatives. As conditions worsen for many of our people, many surrogate parents are reconsidering their commitment to traditional standards and practice of care-giving, especially towards orphaned, abandoned and unparented children.
To make matters worse, the civil war, forced migration, economic dislocation and other crises created unprecedented numbers of unparented children for whom such traditional external family-care has become unavailable or extinct. For example, the civil war, including the attending economic dislocation of the population has forced many parents not only to leave home but also to abandon their children, thus, upsetting the extended family system. The result is the mass migration we see in the Monrovia Metropolitan Area (MMA), where most people sought sanctuary and work. When parents fall victim as they often do to the ravages of war and poverty, their children become vulnerable and are often subject to abuse and neglect. This leads children either to the streets or poorly supervised and inadequate orphanages which offer little to no hope for a bright future. No Liberian child should be denied an opportunity to escape such tragic conditions.
Given these conditions, it is safe then for this author to conclude that inter-country adoption offers a substantially better outcome for unparented Liberian children than the alternatives which now dominate the landscape. Notwithstanding, over the past four years, powerful political forces have aligned against inter-country adoption in Liberia, and have had an impact on the policies coming out of the Sirleaf administration. The administration has completely shot down inter-country adoption without an open discussion with service providers. The administration is promulgating a new regulatory regime, pending the conclusion of a presidential commission. This need not be this way as it may have an adverse effect on children, especially those in the pipeline for inter-country adoption. After all, these are Liberia’s children who are being adopted, not because we wish to dispose of them, but because we have a moral responsibility to secure their future.
Yes, this author agrees that inter-country adoption is a relatively new phenomenon for many Liberians, including policymakers and parents. However, for many Liberians, especially poor parents that are trapped in desperately fixed poverty conditions; the desire for better alternatives for their children’s advancement is paramount. Yearning for a better future for one’s child is a natural behavior and instinctive human conduct. It cannot be used to exploit the horrific social conditions of ordinary Liberians simply to satisfy a well-intentioned, but ill-fated social or political agenda. Hence, calling for a moratorium on inter-country adoption without a national dialogue or adequate justification impedes the progress, indeed, success of orphaned, unparented, vulnerable Liberian children.
Accordingly, nonprofit international organizations and institutions who desire to see Liberian children succeed and improve must make every effort to see to it that the adoption process works completely. Individuals in these organizations and institutions have a moral responsibility to support inter-country adoption in a manner that neither undermines nor limits the number of children that can legally be adopted by European and American families. We may disagree on the methods by which these organizations fund their efforts -- the images of death, destruction, hunger, destitution and disease they use throughout the media in both Europe and America — but, we must respect their motives, especially their desire to advance the cause of Liberia’s children. Surely, these organizations can expand their efforts to support inter-country adoption as a viable alternative and supplement to their efforts. This way, we accomplish two objectives relative to the plight of the Liberian child: (1) provide support for unparented children who live in Liberia, and (2) support those children already placed for adoption with families outside Liberia. These two objectives need not be in competition with one another. Similarly, they need not place advocates and supporters on opposing sides where compromise is impossible and unattainable.
What has happened in the past is that officials of government who should support this noble cause and drive the discussion about how best to serve Liberia’s unparented children, seems to have taken sides and formulated a fixed opinion on this sensitive issue thereby making it practically impossible to facilitate or begin any meaningful dialogue on the plight of all of the children, including those already placed with families outside of Liberia. Some of these families have invested time and money in attempting to complete the process of adopting many of Liberia’s unparented children. Many have waited a long time to conclude this process because of the presidential ban and moratorium on inter-country adoption. The Liberian Government has a moral obligation to ensure that these families are made whole. The Sirleaf administration has an even greater responsibility to ensure that these families are treated the way a just society treats its people.
This author believes that any comprehensive national strategy attempting to deal with children in Liberia must incorporate inter-country adoption as an integral part of its final outcome. For example, many of the models presented on inter-country adoption in ‘the Children’s Act’ are offered with a preference for in-country foster care-giving over inter-country adoption. Many in fact express giving mandatory holding periods during which children must be kept in-country before they can be placed internationally, which the author believes is harmful to the Liberian child, if not the state. For instance, ‘the Children’s Act’ gives no credence explicitly to the fact that the vast majority of Liberian children are suffocating from a host of treatable social conditions and socioeconomic challenges; including, many other problems caused by environmental degradation.
Furthermore, the ‘Children’s’ Act fails to recognize the fact that children who birth parents cannot adequately care for them or provide permanent nurturing to them for whatever reasons, are not allowed to exercise their fundamental right of placing their child internationally in a permanent adoptive home. On the one hand, the act does not ensure that the process is fair and balance; on the other hand, the implementation of the policy at the initial stage leaves open the possibility for bureaucratic red-tape and unconstrained extortion. Let’s face it, inter-country adoption is the best alternative to provide Liberian children with needed resources for personal growth and development. The Ministry of Health and the Presidential Task Force on Adoption needs to make every effort to identify unparented children and immediately grant them first preference to be adopted. Second, those children who cannot be reunited with their birthparents or those for whom the preferable permanent parenting solution of our traditional kinship/foster-care system is not immediately available, should be allowed to be adopted in short order.
Ultimately, the ‘Children’s Act’, does not consider inter-country adoption as a permanent nurturing placement option for children. It does not lend itself to the view that adoption is a fundamental right of every Liberian irrespective of social status. In fact, the Act does not present themes and concepts that are authentically Liberian. Its underlying intent is rooted fundamentally in European and American ideals while ignoring traditional Liberian ideals and values. Thus, the Act fails to give needed attention to the dire circumstances of the Liberian child’s relationship to family and a long heritage of giving, compassion, and trust of parents and elders.
Every Liberian has the fundamental right to relinquish or place their child for adoption. And, yet, the ‘Act’ fails to identify with the fact that abject poverty and unbearable socioeconomic conditions are the direct cause of inter-country adoption. It doesn’t acknowledge that inter-country adoption is consistent with other positive social responses to the problems of unparented children, or the fact that it brings new consciousness and resources to Liberia through the child. This author would suggest as countless others have done, that inter-country adoption brings fresh awareness to the plight of poor children and poor communities in Liberia. In fact, this may boost the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) by focusing attention on the plight of children, including their health, sanitation, clean drinking water, hygiene, nutrition, education, the environment, and the air they breathe.
In closing, what we have is not an either - or case. There are Liberian children who lack parents and who desperately need help outside of the traditional kinship and foster-care system. The alternatives are limited. This author’s point, therefore, is to support “Inter-country adoption” while maintaining that in-country adoption be sustained. There is no greater responsibility than to grant the needs of families who wish to adopt unparented children whether inside or outside Liberia. This is an imperative we must not and cannot ignore as a people.
Francis Nyepon
About The Author: Francis Nyepon is managing partner of DUCOR Waste Management in Liberia. He is a policy analyst and vice chair of the Center for Security and Development Studies, and serves on several boards of humanitarian, environmental and human rights organizations in the United States and Liberia. He can be reached at francis.nyepon@gmail.com
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