Belarusian children for foreign parents

Foreigners will only be allowed to adopt children who have not found Belarusian parents during a year. A new regulation of the Council of Ministers “On international adoption and child custody” has come into power.

One of the articles states that child custody will be possible only if there is a special agreement between Belarus and foreign countries.

At the moment such an agreement has been signed only with Italy but, according to the deputy Minister of Education Tattiana Kavalyova, all countries have been informed about it but have not taken any initiative yet.

ERB NOTE:

Now there are 11 thousand children registered in the National Adoption Centre. All of them dream of getting a family. In general, there are 28 thousand orphans in Belarus, the majority of them live in foster homes or with tutors.
The head of the National Adoption Centre Natallya Paspelava explained when children can be adopted by foreign parents:

“Firstly, these are children who haven’t managed to find a family and who have been registered in the Republican data base of orphans and children left without parents’ guardianship  during a year.  Secondly, these are kids included in the list of children liable to international adoption.

The order of being included in the list is as follows:  the child’s state tutor, local trusteeship organization, regional department of education or Minsk committee of education can initiate the process.
But the organizations should first make sure that the child will not be able to find parents in Belarus.

It is necessary to study the child’s system of contacts (find out whether he or she has relatives, their opinion about the child’s possible adoption and whether there are Belarusians who would like to adopt the child or to accept her or him in a family children's home)”.

But today’s adoption figures are not that good. At the beginning of the 90s the number of adopted children totaled 1500 children while now only 300-400 kids can find new parents.

By the way, foreign parents (unlike Belarusians) are ready to adopt children with diseases. Still, Natallya Paspelava thinks that the procedure of international adoption has become less complicated in some way:

“It concerns the term of of validity of foster parents’ documents. They used to be valid only for a year but now the term is applicable to only two types of documents: medical certificate and application for adoption.

But the term has not been cancelled for Belarusian adopters”.

Such changes can be understood. As a rule, the process of international adoption takes much longer than a year. It led to a certain vicious circle – it was necessary to prepare new documents when the process had not been finished.
By the way, it costs international adopters 700 USD to prepare all the documents while national adopters can do it for free.

Photo by www.rusbereza.ru