The Stream

Is adoption tricking Ugandan parents from their children?

Landmark legal case shines spotlight on fraud and exploitation in international adoptions and guardianships.

A Ugandan mother who had her child taken through a fraudulent adoption has filed a petition to revoke the adoptees’ legal guardianship, in what her lawyers say is the country’s first legal case of its kind.

She says her child was removed from her in 2013 after she was declared to be deceased in court documents. Her lawyer says all involved in the adoption case knew she was in fact alive and that a fake NGO engineered the adoption without her consent.

The mother’s case is not unique – as outlined in an Al Jazeera Faultlines investigation that won a News and Documentary Emmy on September 24. In ‘Adoption Inc: The Baby Business‘, Anna Cavell uncovered cases of fraud and exploitation in adoptions between Uganda to the US. In one case, two parents thought they were sending their children to boarding school – only for them to be legally adopted and sent to the United States without their knowledge and consent.

On Monday we’ll look at the human impact of contentious adoption cases in Uganda and what is needed to safeguard the rights of parents and children. Join the conversation.

On this episode of The Stream, we speak with: 

Anna Cavell @AnnaCavell
Journalist, Al Jazeera English 

Ryan Hanlon @AdoptionCouncil
Vice President of Education, Research, & Constituent Services, National Council For Adoption
adoptioncouncil.org

Dennis Enap
Advocate, High Court 
magnaadvocates.com

Nicholas Opiyo @nickopiyo
Human rights lawyer 
chapterfouruganda.org

Read more:
‘Those Kids Are No Longer Yours’: An Investigation into Uganda’s Adoption Market – The Nation
Hope is on the horizon for tackling orphanage trafficking – Thomson Reuters Foundation

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.