The Problem with Global Adoption

International adoptions are steadily rising in the U.S., Canada and Europe. In 1995, around 22,000 children were adopted from developing countries. In 2006, that number swelled to just under 40,000. More than half of those kids were brought to homes here in the U.S. Behind those numbers is mounting evidence that some of those babies are not really orphans at all.

International adoptions can net between $15,000 and $35,000, a big incentive in countries where many live on less than a dollar a day. Corruption makes news when the boy Madonna adopts from Malawi turns out to have a father, or when authorities arrest aid workers boarding a planeload of Sudanese orphans bound for Paris - the children were actually from Chad, and most had families. But thousands of these transactions take place without scrutiny. Some governments are tightening up, but who wants to get in the way of parents pining for a child? Even if it turns out that they’ve been swindled.

E.J. Graff is assistant director at Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She wrote about what she calls the "myth of a world orphan crisis" in her article "The Lie We Love," which appears in Foreign Policy magazine. She joins Word of Mouth with more.

The Adoption Agency Checklist offers advice for prospective adoptive families on how to choose an adoption agency and reduce their chances of becoming victims of adoption fraud.

We also hear from an orphanage in Afghanistan, where the descendants of Genghis Kahn suffer for the warlord’s deeds hundreds of years ago. The decedents of Genghis Khan and his warriors are known as "hazaras" – and they make up one-fifth of the population of Afghanistan. The Taliban murdered tens of thousands of them in the 1990s, creating many orphans. More than 200 of those children are now cared for in an orphanage outside the city of Bamiyan, but that orphanage appears to be a victim of discrimination. Producer Will Everett filed this story for The World Vision Report. Click here to listen.

(Photo by real00)