Tue, 9 February 2010
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She says she is battle-weary and very disillusioned by all the wrongs she has come across over the past years.Ina Hut, director of Wereldkinderen (World Children) the largest adoption agency in the Netherlands, is calling it a day. She is handing in her notice in protest against the way things are run in the world of international child adoption.
In the Netherlands there are more than 30,000 children adopted from abroad. In the early years, international adoption was legalised in the mid 1970s, the children mainly came from South Korea, Indonesia and India. In a relatively high number of cases the adoption parents’ motives were idealistic. ‘Even if you can just save one of them,’ was a statement you heard a lot in those days, referring to children who led a miserable life, for example, in prostitution or in impoverished children’s homes.
Children from China
Today most children come from China. The attitude of many Dutch would-be parents has drastically changed over the past 30 years, says director Ina Hut from World Children:
“Would-be parents have strong desires, and I understand that. Everybody has the right to want children, but you don’t have the right to children. Children have the right to parents. The right to children doesn’t exist on this planet.
For me the last straw was an important political meeting in June. Once again it became clear that in the debate around international adoption it is not in the interests of children that come first, but in the interests of the would-be parents, or gay couples who want to adopt, and also in the commercial interests of the Netherlands and that of politicians who are afraid of losing votes. All other interests than that of the child.”
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