Not Forgotten on World Down Syndrome Day 2015

Down Syndrome, also called Trisomy 21, occurs when a person is born with an extra, third, copy of the 21st chromosome. In Russia, approximately 2,500 children are born with Down Syndrome each year and 85% of them are placed in orphanages. Source.

At the time of the ban on US adoptions 20 children with Down Syndrome had met the American families who wanted to adopt them. 15 of these children remain in orphanages more than two years later despite intense efforts to find other placements for them.

"Children with Down syndrome [still] very rarely find a family in Russia," say experts from the charity fund "Volunteers to help orphans."... According to the coordinator [of the] foundation, Marina Andreeva, recently Russians began to take more in the family "difficult" children with intact intellect...but children who are diagnosed so-called mental illness, in Russia little chance." Source.

An even greater number of American families had begun the process to adopt Russian children with Down Syndrome, but had not yet traveled to meet their prospective sons and daughters. At least two of these children, who would have come home to the US in 2013, have since died in orphanages. Almost all of the rest continue to live out their days in institutional care.

3.21 has been designated World Down Syndrome Day and the theme for 2015 is "My Opportunities, My Choices." Today PURO remembers in particular those sunny* little ones whose opportunities and choices were suddenly and catastrophically limited by Federal Law of the Russian Federation no. 272-FZ. You are not forgotten, sweet children.

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*In Russian, children with Down Syndrome are sometimes referred to as солнечные дети or sun children.

"[The] bloody account is not in our favor."

Much of the discussion of the ban on US-Russian adoptions has touched on the issue of the mistreatment of Russian adoptees already in the US. The mistreatment of any child is absolutely unacceptable and even one case of abuse, neglect or homicide involving an adopted child is one too many. Parents United for Russian Orphans wholeheartedly supports reforming and increasing pre-adoption screening and training and post-adoption support to prevent such tragedies from occurring. Unfortunately, the ban on US adoptions did nothing to protect orphaned Russian children. While it is tragic and shameful that any Russian adoptee has been harmed or killed in the US, these children are no safer when they remain in Russia.

According to the data of the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Pavel Astakhov, at the time of 2010 in the United States since the early 1990s at the hands of American adoptive parents killed 19 children adopted in Russia. However, he noted that in Russia each year in foster care die an average of nine to 15 children - far more than in the US."If we compare the statistics for the dead children in Russia and America, of course, bloody account is not in our favor," said Astakhov. Source.

An analysis of the 2011 child welfare data for both Russia and the US likewise found that "mistreatment by adoptive parents is relatively low in Russia, and lower yet in the United States."

Sadly, the situation is worse for orphaned children with disabilities because very few of them will be adopted within Russia. A 2014 Human Rights Watch Report found "that many children and young people with disabilities who have lived in [Russian] orphanages suffered serious abuse and neglect on the part of institution staff...Some children interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that orphanage staff beat them, injected them with sedatives, and sent them to psychiatric hospitals for days or weeks at a time to control or punish them."

It is particularly disheartening that the ban on US adoptions was passed less than two months after a new bilateral agreement, which dramatically increased both pre-adoption training and post-adoption reporting, came into force and so those improvements were never tested. In addition, in the months following the ban, the group of parents who had met the Russian children they hoped to adopt, but who had not yet finalized the adoptions in court, proposed a plan to comply with the terms of the bilateral agreement and further grant the Russian Federation even greater oversight of adoptees in the US through scheduled consular visits and direct notification of child welfare cases involving Russian adoptees. But even these additional safeguards were rejected.

The safety and well-being of vulnerable children is a serious issue for all civilized societies, but it is one which nationalism has no place. International adoption is a distant third-best option for children who cannot be safely raised either by their birth families or by foster or adoptive families in their country of birth, but it is not in the best interest of these children to eliminate or drastically restrict this option until a better, safer placement is available for each child.