tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/hague-convention-14656/articlesHague Convention – The Conversation2018-11-08T18:05:29Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1055872018-11-08T18:05:29Z2018-11-08T18:05:29ZA glimmer of light amidst the darkness: honour in the First World War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243907/original/file-20181105-83641-k751ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C11%2C797%2C543&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A display of acrobatics by German internees at the prisoner of war camp at Newbury Racecourse in Berkshire in October 1914.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/German_Prisoners_of_War_in_Britain_during_the_First_World_War_Q53357.jpg">Imperial War Museum/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first lines of Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57258/insensibility">Insensibility</a>’ (1893 – 1918) bear testament to the chilling impact of the First World War on those who participated in it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Happy are men who yet before they are killed<br>
Can let their veins run cold.<br>
Whom no compassion fleers<br>
Or makes their feet<br>
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sacrifice of more than 16 million lives on the altar of an unfeeling war machine and the traumatisation of millions more, which Owen, writer <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-histoire-moderne-et-contemporaine-2001-4-page-160.htm">Jean Norton Cru</a> and other like-minded eyewitnesses so evocatively captured, have become the point of reference for the modern remembrance of 1914-18. It is easy enough to understand why the horrors of the trenches, the introduction of ever more efficient methods of killing and atrocities like the Armenian genocide have left such an indelible impression on the collective imagination.</p>
<p>And yet societies’ adaptation to what the Dublin historian John Horne has termed the <a href="https://zeithistorische-forschungen.de/3-2004/id%3D4534">“totalitarian tendencies”</a> of the Great War cannot be reduced to the corrosive effects of trauma alone. Rather than rendering combatants “insensible”, as Owen believed, the long duration of the war actually owed a great deal to citizens’ emotional mobilisation for higher ideals. While the choice of belligerent nations to frame their struggle in terms of a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Great_War_and_Medieval_Memory.html?id=pgY_V8I9WyIC&redir_esc=y">“last crusade”</a> might be dismissed as a propagandistic tool to shame the enemy, the rhetoric of chivalry counteracted the inhumanity of the conflict in sometimes surprising ways.</p>
<h2>Captivity and honour</h2>
<p>Consider the 8 million soldiers who ended up in captivity during the course of the war. The capture of so many troops presented armies with serious challenges. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0968344507083992?journalCode=wiha">Protocols of surrender</a> were ill-defined and facilities for housing the men limited. Although prisoners consequently experienced <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/violence-against-prisoners-of-war-in-the-first-world-war/4DECCAF83694C8DE3B47CA6920BD97DC">abuse on a massive scale</a>, the hopes of one German pre-war legal scholar, Paul Wünnenberg, that captives should regain their freedom as long as they gave their word of honour to henceforth accept only non-combat duties were realised in a selective fashion.</p>
<p>For instance, in September 1914 the French war ministry issued <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006028796">special instructions</a> that allowed captured officers to keep their sword and to rent comfortable private accommodations in picturesque towns, where they could walk about if they consented in writing to abstain from escape attempts.</p>
<p>Avoiding the cost and inconvenience of having to employ guards, the British and German authorities early in the war likewise opted to release captured civilians and merchant crews once they had promised not to serve against the captor state. In at least <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/britischer-kriegsgefangener-robert-campbell-hafturlaub-vom-kaiser-hoechstpersoenlich-a-951254.html">one case</a>, a British officer even gained temporary release from captivity to visit his dying mother after pledging his personal honour to return, which he did.</p>
<p>To be sure, even though international humanitarian law in the shape of the <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/150?OpenDocument">Hague Conventions</a> (1899/1907) endorsed parole agreements, belligerents largely abandoned the custom in the first year of the war. In itself this development was perhaps not surprising, for parole agreements imposed a moral obligation on prisoners to eschew escape, which deprived governments of their service. Furthermore, the option to enter into contracts with the enemy injected a democratic element into warfare by empowering the individual soldier to decide for himself when to quit the fight.</p>
<h2>Parole agreements</h2>
<p>More remarkable was the return of parole agreements in modified form during the second half of the Great War. The proliferation of “barbed wire disease” among long-term prisoners led to a series of bilateral treaties between Britain, France and Germany that provided for the internment of sick captives in neutral Switzerland as well as the Netherlands. These agreements entitled internees to visit local towns in return for their word of honour not to escape. The option to take short walks outside the camp walls also became available to officers who remained behind in Germany and agreed to sign so-called parole cards.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243920/original/file-20181105-12015-2nyeh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243920/original/file-20181105-12015-2nyeh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243920/original/file-20181105-12015-2nyeh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243920/original/file-20181105-12015-2nyeh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243920/original/file-20181105-12015-2nyeh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243920/original/file-20181105-12015-2nyeh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243920/original/file-20181105-12015-2nyeh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Parole card, 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Council of the National Army Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The resurrection of parole as part of wider endeavours to improve captivity remind us that the cataclysm of the First World War was more than just a race to the bottom. Though too uncoordinated in the final resort to stem the systemic violence unleashed by the conflict’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/books/review/Sebag-Montefiore-t.html">“dynamic of destruction”</a>, these philanthropic impulses held important lessons for the subsequent course of humanitarian thought and practice (as evidenced, for instance, by the new <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/305">Geneva Convention of 1929</a>).</p>
<p>The “sentiment d’honneur” was integral to this learning process because it constituted the primary guarantee for soldiers’ good conduct, as the Belgian international lawyer Gustave Rolin-Jacquemyns <a href="https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01856134/document">had pointed out</a> as early as 1871. Many years later a German peer commented on the <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k61390625/f161.image.r=Du%20manque%20de%20parole%20des%20prisonniers%20de%20guerreHenri%20HarburgerDu%20manque%20de%20parole%20des%20prisonniers%20de%20guerre">reciprocal nature of honour</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Even in war and between hostile armies, there needs to exist something like loyalty and good faith. In the absence of this principle no pause, cease-fire or capitulation are possible.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the centenary of Armistice Day approaches, we would do well to commemorate this lesson.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jasper Heinzen received funding from EURIAS, Institut d'études avancées de Paris and British Academy.</span></em></p>During First World War, the rhetoric of chivalry counteracted the inhumanity of the conflict in sometimes surprising ways.Jasper Heinzen, Maitre de conferences en histoire de l'Europe moderne, Université de York, Fellow 2018 - IEA de Paris, Institut d'études avancées de Paris (IEA) – RFIEALicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/924992018-03-15T22:29:49Z2018-03-15T22:29:49ZHow pot-smoking became illegal in Canada<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210279/original/file-20180314-113482-16sjfdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Canada is on track to legalize marijuana on July 1. But why was it criminalized in the first place?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1923, when it became illegal to possess cannabis in Canada, very few Canadians would have heard of the drug, let alone tried it.</p>
<p>So why did legislators target weed?</p>
<p>Cannabis advocates <a href="https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/1997/06/01/1244">have long blamed women’s rights activist</a> Emily Murphy. Her 1922 book on the drug trade in Canada, <em>The Black Candle</em>, claimed that marijuana users “become raving maniacs” and “are liable to kill or indulge in any sort of violence.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210610/original/file-20180315-104635-p5w3o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210610/original/file-20180315-104635-p5w3o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210610/original/file-20180315-104635-p5w3o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210610/original/file-20180315-104635-p5w3o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210610/original/file-20180315-104635-p5w3o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210610/original/file-20180315-104635-p5w3o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210610/original/file-20180315-104635-p5w3o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emily Murphy is seen in this photo from the 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But even though <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/emily-murphy/">Murphy’s drug activism</a> played an important role in strengthening Canada’s drug laws in the early 1920s, the real reason cannabis was criminalized has much more to do with Canada’s attendance at international meetings.</p>
<p>In the early 1920s, the panic over drug use had much to do with <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/archives/topic/chinese-immigration-to-canada-a-tale-of-perseverance">the drive to ban Chinese immigrants from entering Canada.</a> Drug crusaders like Murphy blamed Chinese opium sellers for leading Canadian youth to ruin. </p>
<p>In a series of articles in Maclean’s in 1920, Murphy warned that drug-addled young women would give in to the sexual demands of Chinese men, leading to the birth of “mixed-race” babies.</p>
<p>In Vancouver, her articles helped give rise to an anti-drug campaign that went on for months. As a result, the federal government passed legislation increasing the minimum penalties for the possession of drugs to six months. </p>
<p>At roughly the same time, the government stopped virtually all Chinese immigration to Canada. But this drug panic had little to do with marijuana: It was squarely aimed at Chinese traffickers and users of opium.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210295/original/file-20180314-113475-ji6yf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210295/original/file-20180314-113475-ji6yf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210295/original/file-20180314-113475-ji6yf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210295/original/file-20180314-113475-ji6yf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210295/original/file-20180314-113475-ji6yf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210295/original/file-20180314-113475-ji6yf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210295/original/file-20180314-113475-ji6yf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 2006 photo, 97-year-old Thomas Soon and 99-year-old Charlie Quon hold government cheques, the first redress payments to Chinese head tax payers. Canada formally apologized to Chinese Canadians for the head tax, which was charged to Chinese immigrants to Canada early in the last century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(CP PHOTO/Lyle Stafford)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even so, in the middle of this drug panic, Parliament added cannabis, not opium, to the schedule of restricted drugs. The exact reason remains a mystery. </p>
<p>There was no debate in the House of Commons about the addition of cannabis. There are few records pertaining to the issue in Library and Archives Canada, and no mention of the decision in the media.</p>
<h2>Cannabis banned in 1923</h2>
<p>But controlling cannabis had been under international discussion for more than a decade, although it did not become part of an international convention until 1925, when the <a href="http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/canadasenate/vol3/chapter19_1925_Geneva.htm">Geneva Convention limited Indian hemp</a> to “medical and scientific” consumption. </p>
<p>In 1929, the assistant chief of Canada’s so-called Narcotic Division, K.C. Hossick, wrote that Canada had to include cannabis on the schedule of restricted drugs because Canada had ratified the Hague Convention. </p>
<p>This was not true, as it was not until 1925 that cannabis came under international control, and Canada banned cannabis two years earlier. Even so, Hossick’s reference to the international treaties suggest the idea for adding the drug came from international discussions.</p>
<p>Much later, in 1974, Alexander B. Morrison, the assistant deputy minister of the health protection branch at Health and Welfare Canada, wrote: “It appears that Col. Sharman (chief of the narcotic division) returned from meetings of the League of Nations convinced that cannabis would soon fall under international control. In anticipation….he moved to have it added to the list of drugs controlled under Canadian law.” </p>
<p>This explanation seems far more likely than Murphy’s book chapter.</p>
<h2>Not a bestseller</h2>
<p>While Murphy’s articles in Maclean’s created panic, the book attracted little attention. By this point, officials the Department of at Health had little respect for Murphy and likely weren’t taking her views seriously. What’s more, the marijuana chapter was a minor inclusion in a long book devoted to the problems of opium and cocaine. </p>
<p>There were no convictions for the possession of marijuana in Canada for 15 years and even then, they were unusual. The drug was rarely mentioned in the media until the mid-1930s, <a href="https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/24153/reefer-madness-the-twisted-history-of-americas-weed-laws">when the anti-marijuana, “reefer madness”</a> campaign in the United States exploded, associating marijuana use with criminality, murder and insanity.</p>
<p>Even then, the drug attracted little attention in Canada.</p>
<p><a href="http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/august-29-1938-police-fight-deadly-loco-weed">In the 1930s,</a> the RCMP requested landowners who were growing hemp as a windbreaker to destroy the plant. Almost none of them were aware of the potentially psychoactive properties of the weed.</p>
<p>In his autobiography, <a href="http://www.britishempire.co.uk/forces/armyunits/canadiancavalry/rcmpharvison.htm">Clifford Harvison, a former RCMP commissioner</a>, reported that one of the few protests came from an older woman who grew the plant to feed her canaries, who sang feverishly after their meal. When the RCMP tried to destroy the plants, she shooed them away with a broom. The police wisely retreated. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210391/original/file-20180314-113465-nfhqhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210391/original/file-20180314-113465-nfhqhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210391/original/file-20180314-113465-nfhqhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210391/original/file-20180314-113465-nfhqhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210391/original/file-20180314-113465-nfhqhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210391/original/file-20180314-113465-nfhqhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210391/original/file-20180314-113465-nfhqhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canaries apparently have a passion for hemp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As late as the mid-1950s, a study of convicted drug criminals in British Columbia found that very few of them had ever tried the drug. It was not until the Baby Boomers <a href="https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2015/02/13/history-cannabis-canada-part-6-1960s-psychedelics-hippies-and-summer-love">came of age in the swinging 1960s</a> that cannabis became a drug of choice. </p>
<p>Middle-class youth were outraged by the long sentences given out for marijuana possession, as were some of their parents. In 1969, amendments to the drug act made it possible for prosecutors to proceed by summary conviction. </p>
<p>This made it far more likely that possession of marijuana would be punished by a fine rather than a jail term and <a href="https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/362/ille/rep/rep-nov98-e.htm">set us on the path towards legalization.</a> </p>
<p>And so after this long and fascinating history, cannabis will become legal in Canada on July 1, although <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senate-vote-pot-bill-1.4537624">delays in the Senate mean that legal marijuana</a> will not be available until later in the summer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was originally supported by a grant from SSHRC.</span></em></p>Canada is legalizing marijuana on July 1. But how the drug became criminalized in the first place is an interesting saga that involves anti-Chinese racism and international influence.Catherine Carstairs, Professor and Chair, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/421082015-05-25T01:28:53Z2015-05-25T01:28:53ZYour child is missing. Would you want their adoption to be easier?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82659/original/image-20150522-12512-1l7iadh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Millions of children in overseas orphanages ... would dearly love to have parents', claims Tony Abbott, and his government is making intercountry adoption easier.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.intercountryadoption.gov.au/">Screenshot/Intercountry Adoption Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine for one moment your child went missing. It’s a common enough event worldwide for today, May 25, to be declared <a href="http://www.missingpersons.gov.au/awareness/campaigns/youthchildrens-day">International Missing Children’s Day</a>. Surely you would expect no stone to be left unturned to find your child - even if took six months, a year, or two. </p>
<p>But how would you feel if your child was permanently given to someone else before this happened? This is exactly what happens to many families around the world. Parents are targeted by recruiters and children are bought or <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/07/kidnapped-and-sold-inside-the-dark-world-of-child-trafficking-in-china/278107/">stolen and sold</a>. Other children are lost, separated by war or disaster, or left for temporary safekeeping in children’s homes.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/58xj4YX1f0k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Some intercountry adoptions involve children stolen from their parents.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pushing adoption of ‘millions of orphans’</h2>
<p>Last week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/new-agency-to-guide-parents-who-want-to-adopt-children-from-overseas-20150516-gh34d8.html">launched a new government agency and website</a> promoting intercountry adoption, and repeated <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-business-of-orphanages-where-do-orphans-come-from-38485">the dubious claim</a> that “there are millions of children in overseas orphanages who would dearly love to have parents”. It’s part of a multi-million-dollar <a href="http://www.intercountryadoption.gov.au/">service for prospective and adoptive parents</a> intended to speed up adoptions of children from overseas. </p>
<p>The website rehashes what prospective and adoptive parents already know through state and federal departments. There is no information for adult intercountry adoptees, no additional post-adoption support, no research publications – apart from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/adoptions/">yearly reports</a> – and no information about who is staffing this call centre. All in all, it’s a costly exercise for not much return. </p>
<p>The same pressures we see operating in Australia are <a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/adoption/">more intense at the international level</a>. For <a href="http://aaf.sagepub.com/content/24/2/45.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc">over 60 years</a> the focus of many national governments and adoption agencies has not been on re-uniting children with their families. Instead the aim has been to adopt children as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>Over the years many cases have shown that even when families do find their children they are not returned once separation is made permanent through adoption. These cases become more complicated, adversarial and unresolvable the older children become.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ig93rK2Hml4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The case of an Indian family whose daughter was kidnapped for adoption is not an isolated one.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Quick and easy’ runs counter to proper process</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.hcch.net/upload/outline33e.pdf">subsidiarity principle</a> outlined in the <a href="http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=text.display&tid=45">Hague Convention provisions on adoption</a> requires governments to consider in-country solutions first. This is one of the issues scheduled for discussion at the <a href="http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=progress.listing&cat=8">Special Commission meeting</a> of the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) in June 2015. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx">Convention on the Rights of the Child</a> and the subsidiarity principle in the Hague Convention on intercountry adoption, children have a right to be raised by their families, families are entitled to support, and suitable <a href="http://www.unicef.org/protection/alternative_care_Guidelines-English.pdf">in-country alternative care must be provided</a>. </p>
<p>Where intercountry adoption is an option, re-unification is usually not extensively pursued if at all. Not finding the child’s family, or failing to provide families with support, turns on the green light for adoptions to proceed. Children become “abandoned” or <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-business-of-orphanages-where-do-orphans-come-from-38485">“orphans” on paper</a> for this purpose.</p>
<p>For many, the convention on adoption is interpreted as a means to make adoption happen quickly. Thus, if re-unification with family members takes too long, adoption can be considered (see chapter six of the Hague Convention <a href="http://www.hcch.net/upload/adoguide_e.pdf">Guide to Good Practice</a>). </p>
<p>Few resources are committed to a child’s right to their family and culture. A child’s right to their family is often <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/adoption/bgop-ed.html">over-ridden by a Western view</a> of what “family” means and a sense of urgency for permanency through adoption. Intercountry adoption in the “best interests” of children is well resourced. </p>
<p>This presents complex questions as children should have stability, but there are other ways of providing good care and stability until the need for adoption is properly determined. The mantra of “children looking for a permanent family” is often used in adoption circles to justify adoption, but at what point does “permanent family” no longer mean their own family? It is important that children are not legally separated from their families and countries until all avenues, including family assistance, are legitimately exhausted.</p>
<p>The risk is that influential parties who support speedier and easier adoptions will use the Hague meeting in June to push for time frames that will effectively extinguish re-unification possibilities and legitimise unnecessarily speedy processes.</p>
<p>Searching and re-unification are time-consuming and resource-intensive. But these processes are not impossible and are undertaken by some international and smaller organisations. An Australian adoptee was even able to find his own family in India using Google Earth.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uEY-j-tCOWQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">One adoptee in Australia tracked down his own family in India using Google Earth.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A problem arises when the agency tasked with finding a child’s family is often the same one facilitating adoptions. Some seem to believe that there is nothing wrong with an open market in children where children move seamlessly across borders in both directions much like goods and services in global economies and trade agreements. Others have a commitment to safeguarding children’s rights and the rights of families affected by adoption who do not have a voice, and are concerned about the long-term effects on everyone when adoptions are not conducted well.</p>
<p>Adoption as the permanency solution appears to have taken on a religious fervour to the exclusion of all else. But one size never fits all.</p>
<h2>Focus must be on original family first</h2>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_adoption">Open adoptions</a> will also be under discussion at the Hague as a means of offering a remedial response to the separation of families. Where adoption does occur, open adoption is important.</p>
<p>However, the realities of intercountry adoption may mean this is just an aspiration – assuming the definition refers to open and continuing relationships between the children, their families and adoptive families. Because there are no enforcements for adoptive parents to continue such costly and emotionally difficult arrangements, it is likely to remain aspirational. </p>
<p>A small number of adoptive parents most certainly do establish and maintain contact, especially in those cases where they have discovered corruption or child trafficking. These adoptive parents have gone out of their way to find the child’s family, placing the child’s needs first.</p>
<p>It would be a sad day if discussions about the subsidiarity principle resulted in setting time frames to speed up intercountry adoptions, instead of redirecting resources to re-unification, family sustainability and appropriate in-country care before adoption is considered. A proper process benefits everyone. </p>
<p>So what should “proper process” mean? I suppose it comes down to what you would expect if it was your child who was missing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Fronek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most of the world’s ‘orphans’ are not orphans at all and many are caught up in a global trade in meeting demand for adoption. Making intercountry adoption easier adds to the risks for these children.Patricia Fronek, Senior Lecturer, School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/367632015-01-28T19:22:08Z2015-01-28T19:22:08ZShopping for children: Australian adoption market puts them at risk<p>On Sunday, January 25, Prime Minister Tony Abbott released a little more detail about his <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-01-25/intercountry-adoption-support-service-help-families">plans for adoption</a> in Australia. Although specifics are still pretty thin on the ground, the announcement makes <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Intercountry_Adoption_Bill/Submissions">the concerns</a> that I and others raised previously very real.</p>
<p>Since coming to power, Abbott has turned to lobbyists for his information on adoption and what should be done. He ignores the advice of skilled practitioners, respected Australian adoption researchers and organisations such as International Social Services (<a href="http://www.iss.org.au/">ISS</a>) and <a href="http://www.unicef.org.au/">UNICEF</a>.</p>
<p>From the beginning, the approach to adoption has been clouded in secrecy and bias towards the <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/01/25/deborra-lee-furness-commends-new-agency">wants of lobbyists</a>, ignoring important stakeholders like adoptees for whose benefit adoption should be all about. The best interests of children are paramount, according to the <a href="http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=conventions.listing">UN conventions</a> to which Australia is party. </p>
<p>There are several very worrying elements of this latest announcement.</p>
<h2>Advocacy ‘shop’ ignores conflicts of interest</h2>
<p>The first is the language Abbott uses. From the beginning Abbott has used the language of adoption as a service for adopters, not children. More concerning is the use of the word “shop” when he promises to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… make it simpler to adopt children from overseas.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Words are important. “Shop” paints a picture of commercial transactions and places the emphasis on children as a commodity, which is distressing and offensive to many in the Australian adoption community, especially to adoptees. “One-stop shop” might be government lingo but its use shows a deep lack of understanding on the part of the government about adoption issues and the impact of these policies.</p>
<p>Second, Abbott has not named the agency that will be running this new “shop” and whose role will be to advocate for the needs of prospective adopters, not children. He <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-01-25/intercountry-adoption-support-service-help-families">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Prospective parents have told me they simply don’t have anyone advocating for them. Now there will be someone to guide them and support them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Speculation is rife about lobbyist-led agencies and the potential for <a href="http://www.law.uq.edu.au/ht-child-trafficking#childinter">profit-driven trafficking</a> in finding children for Australian families under these arrangements. The speculation is fuelled by leaks from lobbyists who have access to privileged information and by the replication of the words of lobbyists in government media releases. Intercountry adoption has already been handed over in principle in New South Wales with the <a href="http://www.kidsguardian.nsw.gov.au/adoption/accredited-agencies">accreditation</a> of an adoption-driven lobby group announced via their online groups.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the Attorney-General’s Department <a href="http://www.ag.gov.au/USASPinvitation">invited US adoption agencies</a> to work with Australia.</p>
<p>Third, “trained staff will advocate on [adopting parents’] behalf”. There is no mention of the role of qualified professionals in this new “shop”. Any de-professionalisation of services that should be for children, combined with deregulation and blatant disregard for safeguards, is not in the best interests of children in Australia or overseas and has the potential to cause harm.</p>
<p>Abbott is handing over communications with prospective parents and the new role of advocating on their behalf for quicker adoptions with overseas countries to one agency. This is a <a href="http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/australia-simplifies-overseas-child-adoption-653369?site=full">simplification</a> of the adoption process that ignores conflicts of interest and other ethical concerns, establishes prospective parents as customers and risks placing pressure on agencies in sending countries.</p>
<h2>New policy based on myths</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, I was unable to accept the invitation to go to a <a href="http://www.iss.nl/research/conferences_and_seminars/periodic_conferences_debates_and_seminars/international_forum_on_intercountry_adoption_global_surrogacy/">scholarly meeting</a> on intercountry adoption that brought together international researchers in The Hague late last year. The reports from this forum are <a href="http://www.iss.nl/news_events/iss_news/detail/article/69824-wps-596-601-papers-of-the-international-forum-on-intercountry-adoption-and-global-surrogacy/">now available</a>.</p>
<p>These expert reports clearly dispel the adoption myths that there are millions of children available for adoption and who want parents. Abbott insists on perpetuating these myths when he claims:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are millions of children in overseas orphanages who would dearly love to have parents. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://repub.eur.nl/pub/77406">One report</a> paints a real picture of the families who do exist and lose their children to adoption. <a href="http://repub.eur.nl/pub/77404">Another report</a> stresses that under no circumstances should private or independent adoptions such as those favoured by high-profile lobbyists take place, no adoptions should occur after disaster and the demand from Western commentators for more children is a problem.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gfnja90whuI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Finally, despite assurances that changes to Australian immigration laws would relate to only a limited number of countries, the list <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/abbotts-plan-to-overhaul-adoption-laws/story-fni0cx12-1227195694112?nk=a0155642e39d72df592d84e12a0c505d">has expanded</a> to the United States, Poland, Vietnam, Latvia, Kenya, Bulgaria and <a href="http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/adoption-revamp-offing-oz-report">Cambodia</a>. Australia has effectively handed over responsibility to ensure ethical adoptions to these countries. Once again there has been little real consultation or engagement within Australia except with pro-adoption lobbyists. </p>
<p>I hope Australia will not join the ranks of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/evidence-of-trafficking-of-indian-children-for-illegal-adoption-emerges-20140124-31e84.html">those countries</a> whose adoption stories are overwhelmingly negative. It is children, their families and their adoptive parents who ultimately experience the fallout when human rights and international conventions are ignored, <a href="http://www.humantrafficking.org/uploads/publications/child_laundering_270407.pdf">documented concerns</a> are ignored and policies are rushed to please those with the loudest voices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Fronek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On Sunday, January 25, Prime Minister Tony Abbott released a little more detail about his plans for adoption in Australia. Although specifics are still pretty thin on the ground, the announcement makes…Patricia Fronek, Senior Lecturer, School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.