Restorative justice and the impact of the Hague Convention on US transnational adoption

Abstract

The concept of restorative justice (RJ) has been extended beyond a focus on crime to such areas as education, the workplace, and the family. Recent efforts of the US to implement the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption provide an opportunity to examine RJ values as components of transnational adoption policy. If we accept Braithwaite’s suggestion to think of RJ in terms of avoiding harm rather than in terms of doing good then we can surely think of the Hague Convention as a restorative instrument as principles involving social justice and human rights align with principles of RJ to circumvent human rights abuses and to monitor conflicts in transnational adoption. Though written and signed by 83 countries in 1993, the US did not ratify the Hague Convention until 2007 and implementation of the Hague Convention began in April, 2008. Drawing from US Department of State data on transnational adoptions, political and social changes specific to sending countries, shifts in sending country adoption policies, and changes in the marketing of programs by private adoption agencies, this paper assesses the impact of the Hague Convention on transnational adoption generally, and US transnational adoption in particular.

Keywords:

• transnational adoption
• Hague Convention
• international policy
• family
• social justice

Notes

1. Fifty percent of children adopted internationally are adopted by US citizens.

2. The timeline for the yearly visa count by the US Department of State occurs from October through September. The number of adoptions for 2009 reflects only those adoptions that were already in process and allowed to be completed.

3. A country is regarded as non-Hague if it signed the Convention but failed to ratify it. Therefore, although China had signed the Convention in 2002, it did not implement it until 2006 and thus, is not included as a Hague country for the 2005 data.

4. International adoption expert and demographyer Peter Selman provides changes in the trends of transnational adoption (http://www.familyhelper.net/news/110315global.html).