Adoption At Any Price?

The British High Court reserved judgement on a challenge by six couples against a Government ban on the adoption of Cambodian children.

According to the report in the Scotsman:

The Government, along with other Western countries, took action because of growing corruption and child trafficking in Cambodia.

There was particular concern that sufficient safeguards were not in place to prevent children being adopted without proper consent from their birth parents.

Earlier in the week Times Online carried this report by Alexandra Blair.

It quotes one couple as saying that with 5 per cent of the population orphaned, largely by the Aids epidemic, the extended family system could no longer cope.

Unicef estimates there are around 670,000 orphaned children in Cambodia. Since 1998, more than 2,300 Cambodian children are believed to have been adopted by Western couples. In 2000, Hun Sen, the Prime Minister, briefly banned all adoptions abroad before lifting the ban, pending regulation.

Several Western countries, including the United States and France, have imposed similar bans to Britain after it emerged that poverty-stricken families were giving up children for cash and that other children were being bought directly from orphanages.

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