A:  The Convention strengthens protections for children, birthparents, and prospective adoptive parent(s).  It strives to provide children with permanent, loving homes by setting out internationally agreed-upon rules and procedures for adoptions between countries that have a treaty relationship under the Convention.  It ultimately provides a framework for member-countries to work together to ensure that adoptions take place in the best interests of a child and to prevent the abduction, the sale of, or the traffic in children.  The Convention also establishes a Central Authority in each country to ensure that one authoritative source of information and point of contact exists for prospective adoptive parents to receive reliable and accurate information.  For these reasons, the Department strongly supports the Principles of the Convention. 

A:  Once the United States has joined the Convention, U.S. adoption service providers that wish to perform intercountry adoptions between the United States and a Convention country will generally need to be accredited, temporarily accredited, approved, or supervised.  In accordance with the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 (“IAA”), domestic legislation that implements the Convention in the United States, the Department has designated the two accrediting entities (AEs) who had applied to participate -- the Council on Accreditation (COA) and the Colorado Department of Human Services -- to perform the accreditation and approval function.  AE duties include accreditation, monitoring of adoption service providers, and assessing substantial compliance with the accreditation/approval standards published by the Department.

A:  The legislation passed by Congress to implement the Hague Adoption Convention, which is the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 or IAA,    allows the AEs to charge fees to adoption service providers to cover the costs of accreditation/approval.  In accordance with the IAA, the State Department reviewed the fees to ensure, among other things, that they did not exceed the costs of accreditation/approval.

Q:  What criteria were followed by the Department when approving the fees that the AEs plan to charge to accredit or approve adoption service providers?

A:  In seeking Department approval of their fees, the AEs were required, pursuant to the accreditation regulations (22 CFR 96.8), to demonstrate that their proposed fees reflected appropriate consideration of the relative size of, the geographic location of, and the number of Convention adoption cases of agencies applying for accreditation, temporary accreditation, or approval.  AEs were also required to demonstrate that the proposed fees being charged not exceed the costs to the AE of performing the accreditation/approval function.

Finally, pursuant to the regulations, the proposed fees had to include the costs of all activities associated with the accreditation or approval cycle, including costs for completing the accreditation or approval process, complaint review and investigation, routine oversight and enforcement and other data collection and reporting activities. 

The Department carefully reviewed proposed budgets and other documentation from the AEs during its comprehensive review.  The Department determined that the total fees each AE expects to collect for accreditation, temporary accreditation, and approval will not exceed the full costs to that AE of performing the accreditation/approval function. 

A.  Some countries have stated that they will allow their children to be adopted only by prospective adoptive parents in countries who are party to the Convention, so it is essential that the United States become a Convention country in order to permit continued adoptions in those countries.  Once the Convention enters into force with respect to the United States, we believe that Convention member countries of origin will be more willing to coordinate with the United States on intercountry adoptions.  Our embassies overseas communicate with foreign governments on adoption matters regularly and plan to continue to assure them of the importance that the United States places on the Convention.  We encourage all countries to join the Convention and work for protection of children.  We believe that U.S. ratification of the Convention will demonstrate the longstanding commitment by the United States to serving the best interests of children who are eligible to be adopted.

U.S. ratification and implementation of the Convention will offer many highly positive changes for prospective adoptive parents.  For example, a new mechanism for investigating and resolving complaints about adoption service providers will be instituted.  If a prospective adoptive parent has a Hague-related complaint against its adoption service provider, the accrediting entity will be required to fully investigate it.  If a violation is found, the accrediting entity will then determine the appropriate disciplinary action based on the seriousness of the incident as well as the extent to which the adoption service provider has taken or failed to take corrective action.  Both the Convention and the IAA and the accreditation regulations provide a number of safeguards to protect children. They include a requirement that adoption service providers must provide prospective adoptive parents with at least ten hours of preparation and training designed to promote a successful intercountry adoption before they travel to adopt (22 CFR 96.48(a)). 

A.  This was taken into account by Congress in passing the IAA.  Section 505(b) of the IAA states that neither the Convention nor the IAA shall apply if the application for advance processing of an orphan petition (I-600A) or petition to classify an orphan as an immediate relative (I-600) is filed before the date the Convention enters into force for the United States. The date of the Convention’s entry into force will be posted on our web site and published in the Federal Register well in advance.

If prospective adoptive parents have not filed the I-600 or I-600A or equivalent forms before the Convention enters into force, then the entire adoption would be governed by the Convention, the IAA, and the regulations implementing the IAA. This generally means that prospective adoptive parents will need to select an accredited or temporarily accredited agency or approved person to provide adoption services in their case.