US embassy cable - 04HANOI1421

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 HANOI 001421 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR CA/OCS, CA/OCS/CI, CA/OCS/ACS/EAP, 
CA/OCS/PRI, DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR CA/VO/F/P, EAP/BCLTV, AND 
L/EAP 
BANGKOK FOR DHS/DD 
HO CHI MINH CITY FOR CONS AND DHS OIC 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KOCI, CVIS, CASC, PREL, VM 
SUBJECT:  ADOPTIONS IN VIETNAM:  PREVENTING ABUSES 
 
Ref:  A) Hanoi 891  B) Hanoi 0048  C) 03 Hanoi 3203  D) 03 
Hanoi 1759  E) 03 State 49491  F) 03 Hanoi 0218  G) 03 Hanoi 
0064  H) 02 Hanoi 3027  I) 02 HCM 1136  J) 02 Hanoi 2258  K) 
01 HCM 593  L) 01 HCM 580  M) 00 HCM 1363 
 
This is a joint ConGen HCMC-Embassy Hanoi cable. 
 
1.  (U) Summary:  As we wait for the GVN to make written 
revisions to the draft text left with them at the conclusion 
of the first round of adoption negotiations in March, we 
wish to take this opportunity to once again raise our 
concerns about the implementation of any agreement we 
eventually reach, and consider how we can improve adoption 
processing in Vietnam once adoptions resume.  Given the 
implementation regulations associated with the Hague 
Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, Mission recommends 
that the USG press the GVN, alone or in concert with other 
countries with the same concerns, to accede to the Hague as 
soon as possible in lieu of negotiating bilateral agreements 
with every country individually.  Otherwise we are concerned 
that we will return to a system with widespread fraud and 
abusive practices.  See Action Item para 11. 
 
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PAST EXPERIENCE 
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2.  (U) Prior to the passage and enactment of Decree No. 
68/2002/ND-CP, which halted intercountry adoptions within 
Vietnam until a bilateral agreement was reached with 
individual countries with prospective adoptive parents, U.S. 
parents accounted for over 750 orphan visa cases annually. 
While most of those cases seemed legitimate on the surface, 
discrepancies and irregularities appeared in many cases -- 
unanswered questions about the origins of the children and 
the circumstances of their relinquishments; the lack of a 
strong central authority governing the adoption process and 
matching children with families; and lack of documentation 
or even explanations regarding what fees were paid and to 
whom -- clouded each decision.  Add to the mix the high- 
fraud environment in Vietnam, where documents can easily be 
bought and manufactured and official corruption is endemic, 
and consular officers issuing orphan visas are almost never 
100 percent sure about the bona fides of these cases. 
 
3.  (U) This is not merely speculation or suspicion. 
Reftels K, L, and M list several cases of documented 
illegalities in the process.  Certain adoption facilitators 
are believed to have made millions of dollars in the 
adoption business by promising one child to adoptive parents 
with no intention of delivering that child (or, indeed, in 
one case, the child had already been adopted by another 
family), paying off government officials to doctor 
paperwork, and providing a combination of monetary 
incentives, false promises and scare tactics to pressure 
Vietnamese mothers to relinquish their children.  This 
coercion to give up children who are not truly in need of a 
home and family is real and duplicitous.  While $600 may 
seem like a small amount of money in U.S. terms, the average 
per capita income in Vietnam is roughly $480, and in poorer 
provinces where some children have been presented for 
adoption it is only about $200.  The money offered to the 
birth parent or parents is not an amount for reasonable 
medical expenses, but actually remuneration for buying the 
baby.  It is the rough equivalent of offering the average 
American $47,000 for a child over and above medical 
expenses, which are negligible in rural Vietnam. 
 
4.  (U) Adoption facilitators will often offer the money, 
with pictures of other children in well-furnished homes, and 
a promise that the relinquishing parents will be able to see 
their children again in the future.  Familial ties in 
Vietnam are quite strong and families in dire economic 
straits will often let their children be raised temporarily 
by other more economically prosperous members of the family, 
or place them in "nutrition centers" where they can visit 
the children regularly until they are back on their feet. 
The "relinquishment" in these cases is never promoted as a 
permanent separation, but rather predicated on the accepted 
belief that it is temporary.  We can never be sure in these 
circumstances whether parents are giving informed consent 
when signing a "relinquishment" document.  (Note:  we have 
seen several cases recently in HCMC's American Citizen 
Services Unit where parents of high school aged children who 
went to the U.S. on cultural exchanges have come in to sign 
and notarize U.S. court documents relinquishing parental 
authority over their children so they can be "adopted" by 
the host family in the U.S. and continue their education 
there free of charge.  When consular officers explain to the 
Vietnamese parents that this breaks the parent-child bond 
and they will no longer have any legal tie or claim to the 
child, they universally withdraw the notarial request.) 
 
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CURRENT EXPERIENCE OF THOSE WHO HAVE SIGNED 
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5.  (U) It is also our contention that the vast amounts of 
money that can be earned in the adoption process are 
actually "creating" orphans for intercountry adoption here 
in Vietnam.    Once the new decree went into effect, only 
France had an existing bilateral Agreement in effect with 
Vietnam and could thus resume intercountry adoptions right 
away.   The French Agreement is unique in that it specifies 
set amounts of money that can be paid at each step - not a 
small amount, but certainly less than U.S. adoptive parents 
said they were paying on average.  French Embassy officials 
report that there are nearly 1500 pending dossiers from 
French couples wanting to adopt for whom no children can be 
found.  The supply simply isn't there.  The informal word is 
that children are being "held" until the Americans come back 
into the game, since they will pay more money.  The fact 
that our participation in intercountry adoptions in this 
country is "creating" orphans is disturbing and confirms our 
worst fears about the source of many children who were 
identified as orphans in past cases. 
 
6.  (U) In addition, five other countries have also entered 
into bilateral agreements with the GVN (Belgium, Italy, 
Ireland, Sweden and Denmark) but none of them has resumed 
adoption processing due to difficulties with implementation 
of their agreements.  At first it appeared a new central 
authority, the Department on International Adoptions in the 
Ministry of Justice, would make the matches between the 
children and adoptive parents and have authority to license 
adoption providers and facilitators in country.  That 
process has now devolved back to the provincial level, with 
the new Department adding a new level of bureaucracy to the 
process but with seemingly no regulatory or enforcement 
mechanism to make changes binding on the provinces.  Under 
this scenario, which is still unfolding, it is increasingly 
apparent that we will return to status quo prior to the 
decree's implementation date in terms of processing adoption 
cases.  At the provincial level there is essentially no 
effective mechanism to prevent the kind of corrupt practices 
we have outlined. 
 
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STUDY THE CHINESE MODEL 
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7.  (U) During the negotiations, we raised the issue of 
implementation and gave to the GVN side a non-paper 
outlining our concerns.  Unfortunately, the negotiations 
became bogged down in title and form, and discussion of 
implementation was pushed to the back burner pending 
agreement on an actual document to discuss.  We do find it 
encouraging, however, that Mr. Vu Duc Long, Acting Director 
of the Department of International Adoptions and the lead 
negotiator for the GVN, is organizing a trip to China to 
study their adoption system, a model which we agree should 
be emulated here in Vietnam. 
 
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THE HAGUE AS A WAY FORWARD 
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8.  (U) Pending final approval of a bilateral document 
between the U.S. and Vietnam, we strongly believe now is the 
time to discuss how we can improve implementation of that 
agreement.  Certain changes to the current adoptions process 
in Vietnam will offer a way to reduce the abuses of the 
past, and the USG should press the GVN, alone or in concert 
with other countries with the same concerns, to accede to 
the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions as soon as 
possible, in lieu of negotiating bilateral agreements with 
every country individually.  It should be apparent to them 
at this point that their plans to implement each agreement 
with completely new and different provisions for every 
country are untenable.  We believe we can garner support 
from other foreign missions in Vietnam to approach the GVN 
with a joint demarche on this subject. 
 
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OTHER ACTIONS IN LIEU OF HAGUE 
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9.  (U) If that approach is unsuccessful, we should strongly 
urge the GVN to take the following actions immediately: 
 
- Give the Office of International Adoptions the sole 
responsibility for matching children with prospective 
adoptive parents and responsibility for licensing and 
regulating of all adoption service providers operating 
within country. 
 
- Publish transparent, consistently applied processing 
regulations, directed by the Central Authority, which do not 
vary from region to region.  Clear processing instructions 
should be provided to all adoptive parents of all countries, 
who will know exactly what they need to do at every step; 
how much the various fees are for the adoption processing; 
which office is responsible for what authorizations; 
requirements for post-adoption monitoring, etc. 
 
- Provide a specific point of contact for the Central 
Authority for the U.S. government to call when concerns or 
problems arise under the agreement.  That point of contact 
should provide a timely, written response to those 
concerns. 
 
- The Central Authority should provide information on the 
circumstances under which the Central Authority is prepared 
to revoke an individual adoption and to provide in writing 
notice that the irregularity is in violation of Vietnamese 
adoption law. 
 
- The Central Authority should develop regulations 
governing licensing or accreditation of adoption agencies 
operating in Vietnam, a mechanism for revoking the license 
or accreditation of agencies that engage in illegal 
practices, and a list of agencies currently authorized to 
process adoptions in Vietnam.  Such regulations should 
apply throughout the country and should apply equally to 
all adoption agencies, regardless of country of origin. 
 
- The Authority should set and provide a list of fees that 
cover every step in the adoption process in Vietnam and to 
provide transparent, consistent fees that all adoptive 
parents must provide and for which they receive a receipt. 
Fees should not vary from province to province. 
 
- The Central Authority should provide a list of 
institutions that will be permitted to place children for 
international adoption. 
 
- There should be a regular forum for information exchange 
about bilateral adoption processing issues and both sides 
should commit to participation. 
 
10.  (U) These changes are incumbent upon the Government of 
Vietnam to set up for themselves.  But as the second largest 
foreign country recipient of Vietnamese adopted children, it 
should be our obligation to push the GVN to adopt these 
measures to ensure the integrity of the process and protect 
the interests of children who are vulnerable to potential 
exploitation for profit.  This would also be in the best 
interests of the birth and adopting parents.  The process of 
obtaining some form of bilateral agreement on adoptions in 
Vietnam is close to entering its third year.  At this point, 
failure to put into place mechanisms that will provide any 
improvement on the worst abuses of the past could call into 
question our claims over the past two years to be working 
towards an agreement that will protect the interests of all 
the parties. 
 
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ACTION REQUEST 
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11.  (U) Action Request:  Embassy seeks Department 
authorization to approach other embassies in Vietnam who 
share our concerns on adoptions processing to prepare a 
joint demarche to the Vietnamese Government, urging them to 
sign the Hague Agreement, with the understanding that some 
assistance may be available to help them accede fully to 
that Agreement.  Mission also seeks authorization to open a 
more formal discussion with the Ministry of Justice 
regarding implementation issues before we come to a final 
agreement on the text of a bilateral protocol. 
BURGHARDT