[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6379-6380]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        UNIVERSAL ACCREDITATION

  (Mr. SIRES asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. SIRES. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month we witnessed the tragedy 
of an inter-country adoption gone wrong when a 7-year-old boy was 
forced back,

[[Page 6380]]

alone, to Russia. Last year over 12,000 children from around the world 
were adopted by American families, yet only a fraction of these 
adoptions were processed by accredited adoption agencies. The others 
occurred under an unregulated process that may not have the best 
interests of the families or the child in mind.
  Just over 2 years ago, the United States became a full member of the 
Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption. Under the Convention, the 
United States requires that inter-country adoption service providers be 
accredited to improve transparency and accountability. Unfortunately, 
these rules only apply to adoptions from countries that have signed the 
Convention. Adoption agencies who work for non-Convention countries do 
not need to meet the accreditation requirements, and these agencies 
continue to conduct unregulated adoptions, creating a double standard 
for the treatment of children and families.
  We must strengthen the adoption practices by requiring accreditation 
for all countries' adoption service providers. Universal accreditation 
will create an adoption process that is lawful, safe for the child, and 
respectful to the families involved.

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