Nepal eases adoption ban after SOS from Europe

Kathmandu, Nov 13 - More than 300 Nepali babies -- orphans, abandoned by their families or given for adoption with their parents unable to care for them -- can now hope to get a new home after Nepal's government decided to ease the ban on inter-country adoption following an SOS from three European governments.

The prime ministers of France, Italy and Spain -- three of the four countries that adopt the largest numbers of Nepali children every year -- wrote to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, urging his intervention on humanitarian grounds.

The French ambassador to Nepal, Gilles Henry Garault, met Koirala last week to personally hand over the letters from Francois Fillon, Romano Prodi and Jose-Luis Zapatero, the prime ministers of France, Italy and Spain respectively.

'This high-level initiative was made by France on behalf of these three countries in order to draw the attention of the Nepali authorities, especially the prime minister, to the difficult and dramatic situation of 340 families whose adoption files have been blocked since March,' the French embassy in Kathmandu said in a statement.

It said Koirala, recognising the importance of the request, instructed his cabinet to process the pending applications.

Inter-country adoptions were halted by Nepal soon after the Maoists joined the government in April and Maoist leader Khadga Bahadur Bishwakarma became the women, children and social welfare minister.

The step was taken after a massive scandal in adoptions hit the headlines, revealing the corruption and exploitation rampant in the process.

Agencies were found to have tricked parents into parting with their children without telling them the kids were being given away to foster parents.

There were also cases of agents promising to bypass regulations and queues to illegally procure for potential parents babies in exchange for large sums of money.

After the revelations, it was decided that adoptions would be put on hold till laws with teeth were enacted to curb the corruption and loopholes.

However, with political instability rocking Nepal, issues other than the election and alliance between the Maoists and the ruling parties have been shelved.

As a result, 340 families from Europe, who visited Nepal, bonded with a child each and started making preparations to adopt the baby, found themselves in the lurch.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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