News from Ethiopia

There have been quite a few rumblings about changes in Ethiopia regarding adoptions and the adoption process. Well, it looks like those rumblings have turned into reality.  I am not exactly sure what to feel right now.  In some ways, I think this is a good thing to make sure that each child's story is correct and that they are, indeed, true orphans.  However, selfishly I am pretty discouraged.  Here's the news:

Posted from: http://adoption.state.gov/news/ethiopia_alert.html

Government of Ethiopia Plans Major Slow-Down in Adoption Processing

March 9, 2011

Citing the need to work on quality and focus on more important strategic issues, the Government of Ethiopia’s Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth Affairs (MOWCYA)  will reduce to a maximum of five the number of adoption cases it processes per day, effective March 10, 2011.  Under Ethiopian adoption procedures, MOWCYA approves every match between prospective adoptive parents and an Ethiopian child before that case can be forwarded for a court hearing.  The U.S. Embassy is working with Ethiopian government officials and adoption agencies to learn more about this change in procedures.  We will continue to share information as it becomes available.

Given MOWCYA's current caseload, the U.S. Embassy anticipates that this change could result in an overall decline in case processing of some 90 percent.  If this change is implemented as proposed, we expect, that parents who have begun the process of adopting from Ethiopia but have not yet been matched with a child could experience significant delays.  It is not clear if this change in procedures would have any significant impact on cases in which MOWCYA has already approved matches. 

Prospective adoptive parents should remain in close contact with their adoption service provider to obtain updates on individual cases.

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When they were seeing around 40 cases per day, going down to 5 cases is quite a drastic reduction, and obviously, as the article states, it is going to cause the process to lengthen quite dramatically if this decision is a long-term one. This affects many, many people and most importantly the children in Ethiopia - while it is a protection for them, it will also cause a strain on the agencies that care for them as they reach capacity and are not able to find families for them and place them in their new homes as quickly as they were able to before.  And while "quicker" is not always better, this decision is not a small one and will have wide-spread effect on adoptions in Ethiopia. Whew...too much. I'll have to come back when I process this a little more.