Although
Russia's population continues to drop, the number
of
children living in Russian orphanages is greater now than
at
any time since the end of World War II.
New Region, Russia
Russian Child Adoption Record Dismal Compared to U.S.
"When
8 year-old ArtemSaveliev was
returned to Russia with a note of 'rejection' from his adoptive American parents,
it caused a firestorm in Russia. … But according to experts, Russians are
biased against adoption, and have almost no tradition of raising children in
temporary foster homes. Therefore, rejecting the adoption of children by
foreigners is premature."
What could have possessed the adoptive American mother of this Russian child to send him back alone on a long-haul flight from Tennessee To Moscow? Investigators haven't yet said, but his former American mother says the child threatened to burn her house down and kill her other children.
Moscow: Russia
is marking a “boom in returns" of adopted children. In just the last two
years, following the enactment of a guardianship law, nearly 30,000 underage
children were returned to the appropriate institutions. This data was
introduced by Yelena
Mizulina, head of the Duma
Committee on Family, Women and Children.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
According to Ms. Mizulina, the
process of adoption has begun to take on a more commercial aspect. It's no rare
occurrence for a child to be taken into a family for financial reasons, and
then rejected, reports Echo of Moscow radio. In addition, Mizulina sees
the lack of working contact with adoptive parents as one of the main reasons
for the increase in frequency of such occurrences.
Overall, Russia has four to five
times the number of orphans than Europe or the United States. The number of young
children without fathers and mothers is even higher today than it was during
the war [WWII].
Let's remember how, when 8-year-old ArtemSaveliev was
returned from the U.S. to Russia with a note of "rejection" from his
adoptive parents, it caused a firestorm in Russia. Society demanded that the
Russian government ban the adoption of children by American citizens. Soon
enough, a moratorium was introduced - that until the signing of a Russian-U.S.
agreement that “allows us to put in place strong guarantees to ensure that the tragedies
which took place in the past won't be repeated.”
Because since the early 1990s,
15 adopted Russian children have died at the hands of American parents.
The story of ArtemSaveliev is by no means a
singular occurrence of adoptive parents abandoning adopted children. Thus the
Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry has been pursuing the return
of a 12-year-old Denis Khokhryakov (Diego Sologub), who in 2005 was abandoned in the Dominican
Republic by his - Russian - adoptive parents.
A scandal emerged recently over
an abandoned Byelorussian girl who was adopted on the Kamchatka Peninsula
in 2004. The child was left to the mercy of fate in Belarus, and for a few
years no one much cared.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
According to Gazeta.ru, since 2005 the number of international
adoptions in the United States began to decline sharply - falling to 10,000. In
2005, over 4,600 Russian children were adopted there; in the past year the
number was just over 1,500.
But in Russia, over 700,000 children
continue to live in orphanages, and their numbers are not on the decline. Every
year immediately after birth, 500 parent-guardians formally give up their babies
- due to domestic insecurity, poverty or fear of social chastisement, writes the
Voice of Russia.
Subsidies for single mothers in
Russia vary from 300 rubles ($10.31) to 4,000 rubles ($137.51) a month.
Aside from that, according to
experts, Russians are biased against adoption, and have almost no tradition of raising
children in temporary foster homes. And therefore, rejecting the adoption of
children by foreigners is premature. Russia is the third largest source of
adopted children in the United States, after China and Ethiopia.
On the whole, according to
National Council for Adoption, over 60,000 children from Russia have been
adopted by Americans.
