The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children And Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption

Abstract

The legal, ethical and political implications of intercountry adoptions exploded into the American spotlight in 2009, when Nancy Hansen, an American adoptive grandmother from Tennessee, pinned a note on her daughter’s adopted 7-year old Russian child, Artyom Savelyev, and booked him on a one-way flight back to Moscow. In the note Hansen alleged that the boy suffered from “severe psychopathic issues” and that the family, fearful for its safety, “no longer wish[ed] to parent [him]”. Whatever the cause, the outcome is not disputed: over the last year the flow of Russian children to American homes has slowed to a trickle, leaving some 600,000 Russian children in need of permanent homes—pawns in a game of international politics in which the players all claim to be acting in the best interests of the children, but which children seem invariably to lose.