In two parts: a direct report from Poland, and links from our Commissioner Carine Hutsebaut.
Child trafficking through intercountry adoption
„The term ‘child laundering’ expresses the claim that the current intercountry adoption system frequently takes children illegally from birth parents, obtains children illicitly through force, fraud, or funds (financial inducement), creates falsified paperwork to hide the child’s history and origins and identifies the child as a legitimately abandoned or relinquished ‘orphan’ eligible for adoption, and then uses the official processes of the adoption and legal systems to ‘launder’ them as ‘legally’ adopted children” – David Smolin, „Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children”
