Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have all moved toward banning international adoptions, primarily due to fraud and corruption. They have commissions and investigations into the adoption process: will the United States join them?

Intercountry adoptions, which began in the 1940’s and 1950’s, have declined dramatically worldwide in recent years for many reasons. What’s significant now is that several western European countries are investigating the cases of adoptees, some of whom are in their 40’s and older, and discovering falsified documents and inaccurate social history information from the adoption agencies.

Norway’s minister for children and families called this week for further investigations into illegalities of intercountry adoptions, primarily from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Colombia. In November, Norway ended adoptions from Madagascar. The reasons for banning these adoptions are concerns about children being trafficked stolen and being given false birth certificates.

Denmark also announced this week that its only international adoption agency would be closing, according to Euronews, after “after a government agency raised concerns over fabricated documents and procedures which obscured children’s biological origins abroad.”

Read more about both countries here: “Is Norway about to end all overseas adoptions?”

Sweden ended adoptions from South Korea in November, citing falsified documents. According to the AP News, “South Korea’s government licensed four private-run adoption agencies that actively sought out foreign couples who wanted to adopt and sent around 200,000 children to the West for adoptions. More than half of them were placed in the United States. 

Now, hundreds of Korean adoptees from Europe, the U.S. and Australia are demanding South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigate the circumstances surrounding their adoptions.”

South Korea has a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is examining irregularities in adoption; close to 400 Korean adoptees have sent requests asking for further investigation. “The commission’s potential findings could allow adoptees to take legal actions against agencies or the government, which would otherwise be difficult because South Korean civil courts put the burden of proof entirely on plaintiffs, who often lack information and resources” according to NPR.

Additionally, the Belgium Parliament approved a resolution on illegal adoptions, which “recognises the occurrence of illegal adoptions in Belgium, confers victim status on those concerned and launches an administrative enquiry into the issue.”

Flanders, the northern region of Belgium, announced an end to intercountry adoptions in December, according to the Brussels Times.

In 2021, the Netherlands suspended international adoptions, “after exposing past abuses, according to the New York Times. A government report in 2018 “found systematic wrongdoing, including pressuring poor women to give up their babies, falsifying documents, engaging in fraud and corruption, and, in effect, buying and selling children. In some cases, the Dutch government was aware of misdeeds in adoptions from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, but did nothing about them and allowed them to continue, the report said.”

France, in 2023, released a report pointing “to 30 years of international adoption mishandling.” “These last few years, the growing number of testimonies of French people claiming to have been illegally adopted abroad already suggested that such abuses were numerous in France. But the “Historical Study on the Illicit Practices of International Adoption in France” published on Monday, February 6, 2023, by historians Fabio Macedo and Yves Denéchère presents an even more shocking picture of the scale of the issue,” according to Le Monde.

The United States has yet to announce any similar investigations.

The U.S. State Department shows overall international adoptions totaling about 280,000 adoptees between 1999 and 2021. There were certainly tens of thousands intercountry adoptions before then. “Despite the recent decline in adoptions from abroad, the U.S. remains the country that adopts the most children internationally,” according to the Pew Research Center, among other sources.

I can’t help but wonder when the United States will read the writing on the European wall about fraud in adoptions, and investigate fraud on behalf of thousands of international adoptees.