Hague Convention Becomes U.S. Law, Page 4
Still to be Worked Out There is no certainty that the regulations will be finalized any time soon. With a law that has so much controversial history and potential, it could be many months before final regulations which meet the approval of the public and of Congress are published. Most observers, including officials at the U.S. Department of State, estimate that it will be
about two years before the regulations are in place, the accreditation system put in place by accrediting bodies, and the necessary accreditations received by non-profit agencies.
A consideration that has not received any attention is the
role of attorneys and others in the new Convention process. Although the Convention allows nations to specify that attorneys may be "approved" to carry out certain functions, the Convention also allows nations to bar any adoption providers except agencies from participating. For decades, countries like the Republic of Korea have banned all but agencies. Many other countries have similar policies. Similarly, a few U.S. jurisdictions also prevent attorneys or any other adoption providers other than agencies from doing adoptive placements. A decision will need to be made about the U.S. position on attorney and other non-agency placements under the Convention.
It is possible, for instance, that the U.S. would decide to bar all non-U.S. adoption providers except agencies from arranging intercountry adoptions of U.S. children. It is unlikely, given the power of attorneys and the fact that influential adoptive parent groups want as many options as possible available to them, that the U.S. would declare that only U.S. agencies will be allowed to help U.S. citizens with the adoption of children from other countries.
Until these and other questions are settled and the entire system is ready to function, the U.S. will not take the step of formally "depositing" the "instrument of ratification" at The Hague. Following the receipt of that document, it will be another three months before the Convention actually goes into effect for the U.S. Even then,
the Convention will only impact those adoptions which take place between two countries that have the Convention fully in place. At this time, for instance, the country that is the largest adoption partner of the U.S., China, has not ratified or implemented the Convention. There are signs that China will move to put the Convention in place, just as the Russian Federation, the U.S.'s second-largest adoption partner, has recently done.
The most reliable web sites for information about the Convention, in addition to
The Hague Conference on Private International Law, are the web sites of the
U.S. Department of State and the
National Council For Adoption. At the present time, there are so many unanswered questions about regulatory and other matters that need to be addressed that little is certain other than the texts of the treaty and the implementing legislation, both of which can be obtained by going to
THOMAS at the web site of the Library of Congress.
© William L. Pierce, Ph.D.
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