The Hague Convention New Rules 2007 The hot news ...

The Hague Convention
New Rules 2007
The hot news in international adoption at this juncture is the implementation of the Hague Convention Treaty set up to safeguard international adoptions. Major Advantages of the Convention and Its Implementation as per the State Department website states:

Provides, for the first time, formal international and intergovernmental recognition of intercountry adoption.
Recognizes intercountry adoption, as defined and treated by the Convention, as a means of offering the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family has not been found in the childÂ’s country of origin.
Establishes a set of internationally agreed minimum requirements and procedures uniformly to govern intercountry adoptions in which a child moves from one Convention party country to another.
Requires that countries party to the Convention establish a Central Authority to be the authoritative source of information and point of contact in that country, to carry out certain functions, to cooperate with other Central Authorities, and to ensure effective implementation of the Convention in the United States.
Provides a means for ensuring that adoptions made pursuant to the Convention will generally be recognized and given effect in other party countries.
Facilitates the adoption by U.S. adoptive parents of children from other party countries through an expanded category of children, safeguarded by the Convention, who will qualify for immigration and automatic naturalization in the United States.
Certain countries have already been apart of this treaty, however to date the United States was not.
That meant that international adoption previously was conductedthroughh the foreign country and the United States had very little to do with the adoption except with regard to INS approval. Now agencies who have previously worked only with foreign governments to procure these adoptions need to deal with the US government as well.
What does this mean to the average adoptive couple? Another layer of government has been added to the mix,bringing with it the usual additionalbureaucraticc requirements and additional paperwork andproceduress not yet outlined. Chances are this new wrinkle will slow down adoptions somewhat as agencies and the new governmental agency will need to feel there way through uncharted waters for a while until they have established a firm policy.
The good news is of course, there are many more safeguards in place for the adoptive family enabling them to recoup lost money in the event an adoption falls through and in fact make it such that adoptions should no longer fall through the cracks. As the agencies scramble to insure that all goes smoothly with theirclientelel the actual additional requirements will not be known for a while. The best advice is to find an agency already accredited internationally and begin the application process as soon as possible. There is a good chance that applications in process may be exempt from the new additional paperwork, but that is yet to be seen. I will keep an eye on this and keep you posted.