The Foreign Service Journal, September 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2017 51 I discovered that the rosy picture many have in their minds about international adoption is not always realistic. replaced by the overwhelming joy of becoming a parent for the first time. This is likely the experience most people expect to have when they adopt internationally—and for most, the process, while lengthy, culminates with a profound sense of emotional fulfill- ment. As many of my consular colleagues can attest, seeing an international adoption through to a successful end is a uniquely rewarding experience. It was an experience I looked forward to having when I arrived in Uganda as the embassy’s consular chief. Instead, I discovered that the rosy picture many have in their minds about international adoption is not always realistic. I worked on hundreds of adoption cases in Uganda, and I found the system to be rife with fraud, corrup- tion and unethical behav- ior. I saw many well-intentioned U.S. citizens and Ugandans being deceived by conniving middlemen. I saw children who were separated from their families and their country because unscrupulous outsiders saw an opportunity to make money by dividing the family. At the same time, I saw some of my own colleagues turn a blind eye to such abuses, despite the fact that our mandate is to help orphaned children find the care, security and love a permanent family can provide. In short, our policy with respect to intercountry adoptions was not meeting this directive, and that is why, ultimately, I made the difficult decision to formally dissent. A Growing Number of Discrepancies I arrived in Uganda with a generally positive view of the process of adoption. But I was aware of certain problems in the country, and as I began reviewing more and more case files, I could not ignore the growing number of discrepancies my inves- tigative staff and I uncovered. What we found were troubling patterns: • Evidence that third parties in Uganda were actively recruit- ing children from their villages to be placed in orphanages or schools (many of them unlicensed) far from their homes. • Testimony from parents and grandparents who said they did not understand the consequences of the papers they had signed, relinquishing their rights over the children being given up for adoption. • Stories from families who thought their children would be returned to them after receiving an education in the United States. • Statements from U.S. citizens who were pressured to hire specific individuals to provide in-country services at exorbitant rates, or to look the other way when government officials were paid to “expedite” the process. • Falsified paperwork and proof that parents who had been reported deceased were alive and well. These were not isolated incidents. We found such evidence every week and every month, in the major- ity of cases we reviewed. I came to understand that we faced an intercountry adoption process in which intermediaries financially benefited from desperate or insufficiently informed American adopters and vulnerable Ugandans. And I believed that the U.S. government should no longer be a party to such fraud. Like any good Foreign Service officer, I first made my case to Washington by reporting on what we were learning through a series of phone calls, emails and face-to-face visits. Perhaps naive myself, I expected my colleagues to be as shocked as I was by the evidence. But they were not. Pressure from All Sides Washington remained steadfast in its support for continuing adoptions in Uganda, even as all other countries represented in Uganda were ending them. Pressure, direct and indirect, came in from all sides to maintain the status quo. I was given guidance on how to navigate Uganda’s legal system, how to engage the host government and how to handle the stakeholders—includ- ing the petitioners, who could be peremptory and extremely demanding. Members of Congress and their staffs called or wrote to inquire about the status of pending cases and to urge expeditious approvals. Adoptive families, I learned, began criti- cizing me by name on social media—with one such family even surreptitiously taking my photo at the airport when I was headed away for vacation. The government of Uganda proved to be an equally disap- pointing partner in resolving the issue. Few officials work on this matter, and the office charged with overseeing intercountry adoptions has few resources to investigate orphanages or ensure