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GUATEMALA MAY PASS ADOPTION LAW, STOP ABUSES.

Article Excerpt
Guatemala exported 2,109 babies in 2001, making it the fourth-largest trafficker in international adoptions, legal and illegal. Only Russia, China, and South Korea surpass Guatemala. Statistics supplied by congressional Deputy Carlos Mauricio Valladares de Leon, president of the women, minors, and the family committee of the Congreso Nacional, indicate that in 1997 there were 1,265 adoptions, in 1998 there were 1,347, and by 2001 the number of children exported from the nation's supply of about 1.8 million children under the age of four was 2,109.

By contrast, Honduras recorded only 78 adoptions between 1997 and 1998. Ecuador, with a population roughly similar to Guatemala's, and a comparable ethnic, socioeconomic situation, saw 80 adoptions during 1998 and 1999. Most Guatemalan adoptions, legal and illegal, are of children under the age of 18 months, and most of the international deals cost the buyers more than US$25,000.

Valladares has introduced a bill for a Ley de Adopciones that would regulate this activity. The legislator contends that, as a function of total population, the number of babies adopted in Guatemala puts his country first, not fourth, in the world, and, with an increase in illegal adoptions that have reportedly cost as much as US$80,000, the time for strict regulation has come.

Valladares said that, under present law, the state does not protect children sufficiently and that, despite the "transcendence and nobility" of adoption, the rights of the...

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