The Orphan Market · Episode 5 of 10 · 43 min
Guatemala: The Purest Market
From 1977 to 2007 Guatemala was the only country to fully privatize adoption, letting private lawyers and notaries match children to foreign families with almost no court oversight. At its 2007 peak about one in 100 newborns went abroad. Baby brokers, fattening houses, falsified DNA tests, and documented kidnappings followed, and the market shut down in 2007 and 2008.
Who's who
- International Commission against Impunity in GuatemalaUN-backed body whose 2010 report found irregularities in reviewed adoption records
- UNICEFChild-welfare agency that acted as a watchdog on Guatemalan adoptions
Where it happens
- Guatemala+7 more episodesPrivatized adoption from 1977; shut down its program in 2007-08
- Missouri, United StatesHome of a couple who adopted a kidnapped Guatemalan child
- Guatemala City, GuatemalaSeat of the new central adoption authority created in 2007
Timeline
- 1977Guatemala privatizes adoption, leaving matching to lawyers and notaries.
- 2007Peak of about 5,500 Guatemalan children adopted abroad.
- December 2007A Hague-compliant law creates a new central authority and a moratorium on private adoptions.
- April 1, 2008U.S. Hague accreditation takes effect and adoptions from Guatemala effectively cease.
- December 2010A UN-backed commission reports irregularities in more than 60% of 3,342 reviewed records.
- 2015Eight people are convicted in a kidnapping case tied to an adoption.
Still debated
No reliable share of Guatemalan adoptions was fraudulent: the commission's irregular covers everything from paperwork defects to kidnapping, and most cases did not involve provable abduction. The widely cited $200 million figure is an estimate, and some advocates call the later prosecutions politically driven.
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