Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Maura Harty Remarks at the Ceremony to Deposit the United States’ Ratification of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption


Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs

Prepared by Maura Harty

Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands The Hague, The Netherlands

December 12, 2007

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Secretary-General van Loon, Ambassador Arnall, colleagues and distinguished guests,

It is my distinct pleasure and honor to be in The Hague on this special day for children involved in intercountry adoptions. Today, the United States will deposit our instrument of ratification of the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.

We would not be here today without the efforts of so many, here in this room, in the United States and around the world. I would like to personally thank:

  • Professor Hans van Loon and Mr. William Duncan of the Hague Permanent Bureau, for their consistent advocacy on behalf of this and other Hague conventions;
  • Ms. Catherine Barry, our Consul General in Paris and recently Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Overseas Citizens Services. She represents the dedicated staff of the Department of State who have doggedly pursued this project to completion; and
  • Mr. Peter Pfund. Peter was one of the visionaries who first saw the need for this convention. He helped craft it in 1994, and has been the conscience of our implementation efforts. 

I would also like to recognize the hundreds of others in Congress, in government, and in the intercountry adoption community, whose belief in this project and tireless work on behalf of children have helped bring us to this wonderful occasion. 

The Convention establishes internationally accepted safeguards for children, birth parents and adoptive parents involved in intercountry adoptions. It establishes a system of international cooperation to ensure its safeguards are protected, and to prevent the abduction, sale or trafficking of children.

The Convention is good news for thousands of American families, and will enable them to provide loving homes for children in need of permanent family placements. It will serve as a valuable tool to help ensure that intercountry adoptions always occur in the best interests of children.

The United States has traveled a long road to get here. Our country was one of the first to sign the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, in 1994. In 2000, Congress passed the Intercountry Adoption Act, the legislation that guides our implementation efforts. On November 16, just before he honored our National Adoption Day, the President signed the ratification documents I bear today. Our deposit of the instrument of ratification is the culmination of 14 years of patient work. 

The U.S. ratification process has taken longer than some would have liked. We have moved toward this goal deliberately, but unceasingly. The hopes and interests of the world’s most vulnerable citizens rested on the outcome of our work. We believe we had a moral imperative to get it right. We believe we have succeeded, and that our becoming a party to the Convention has been worth the effort and the wait.

Becoming a party to this Convention is part of the United States’ broader commitment to establish a global framework for the protection of children. We work actively with the Permanent Bureau and our partners in the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to promote that convention as a means to secure the return of children who are victims of international parental child abduction. Less than a month ago, on November 23, the United States was the first nation to sign the new Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and other Forms of Family Maintenance. The United States is currently exploring signature of the 1996 Child Protection Convention as well.

Today is truly a day for celebration. But it is also a day for renewing America’s commitment to children. We will pursue that commitment as we implement the Hague Adoption Convention in the United States. 

We are proud to join more than seventy other partner nations of this important treaty, and will continue to work with them to improve the operation of the Convention. 

We will continue to encourage other countries to join the Convention, and extend its protections to children around the world. 

And we will continue to work together with many partners to seek further opportunities to build a better future for the world’s children.

Thank you.