One country shuts down the adoption market and then shortly after a different country picks up where the other left off and becomes an adoption hotspot, which wound up being Ethiopia. After Guatemalan inter-country adoptions were shut down in 2007, Ethiopia skyrocketed two short years later in 2009-- regardless of the newly signed Hague Convention that went into effect in 2008; but what actually is the Hague Convention?
The Hague Convention is an international agreement that sets regulations for International Adoptions. The agreement’s purpose is to ensure that adoptions take place in the best interest of the child that is being adopted and to prevent fraud; however, it only applies when both of the countries involved in the inter-country adoption have signed the agreement. America drug her feet to sign this agreement in 2008, but only approximately 70 other countries had signed it also. This left a large loophole in the system and at the time, there was little that the United States could and would do to change …show more content…
Since 2010, after the fatal earthquake in Haiti, the government has made it close to impossible to adopt a child from a different country. They have put heavy regulations on the process of which is needed in order to even start looking for a child. Now, the average amount of time Adoptive parents have to wait for their new son or daughter to come home is five years; and this most often includes several visits with the child and also the birth mother or father if either is still