Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Ethiopia: Gelgela Orphange
This past weekend, PEAR was forwarded a letter from the US Embassy in Addis to US Adoption Service Providers. We understand that some, but not all agencies have informed their clients of the letter and new USE scrutiny of cases involving the Gelgela Orphanage. We believe it is important for adopting and adoptive families to have this information so we have chosen to reprint the letter here:Dear adoption agencies,
Recently, the U.S. Embassy has implemented several changes to the adoption visa process, including conducting significant additional review of each case and field investigations. In light of our findings, and recent serious allegations and news reports involving Ethiopian adoptions, we will require additional time to process each case from any agency in which the child was processed through Gelgela orphanage.
Effective immediately, the Embassy will require 8 weeks' processing time for each adoption visa case in which the child was processed through Gelgela orphanage. This means that families will not receive an immigrant visa appointment until 8 weeks after the complete case file is submitted to the Embassy. We will not accept incomplete case files in these cases under any circumstances. It is the agency's responsibility to plan family travel accordingly. Cases that have already been submitted will continue to be processed as previously scheduled.
For cases already scheduled (for which the Embassy already has the case file), those parents should expect potentially lengthy delays in the processing of cases involving children from Gelgela orphanage.
Sincerely,
U.S. Embassy
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
PEAR put a call out to various organizations and individuals requesting a list of agencies that refer children from Gelgela. The European NGO, ACT (Against Child Trafficking - http://againstchildtrafficking.org/), provided us with the following list which they compiled from public records:
Christian World Adoption
America World Adoption
2 comments:
Not surprised to see at least two of the agencies on that list- feel bad for folks using them though- how would you ever feel confident enough to look your child in the eye and tell them their adoption was ethical.
I just don't understand why people continue to use agencies with unethical practices-when they have been warned.
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