Our hearts have been confused and anxious as we try to stay at peace and wait on news we recently have heard from Ethiopia.
This is taken from The National Council for Adoption - "At the end of February 2011, the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs (MOWA) issued an unexpected directive indicating a dramatic reduction in the number of intercountry adoption cases to be processed by the Ministry. This directive is scheduled to go into effect by Thursday, March 10, 2011. In 2010, more than 2,500 Ethiopian children were adopted by American families. Should MOWA implement the recent directive as indicated, the number of adoptions from Ethiopia could fall as much as 90%, although the full impact of MOWA’s decision is unknown and cannot be predicted at this time.
MOWA’s recent decision appears to have surprised many Ethiopian government officials, as well as the Central Adoption Authorities in the U.S., Italy, and Spain. Many within the adoption community, including the U.S. Department of State (DOS) and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), members of Congress, child welfare officials in many countries, and the National Council For Adoption (NCFA), have criticized the MOWA directive as unfair, unnecessary, and harmful to children in Ethiopian orphanages who await permanent families."
The number of children adopted internationally from Ethiopia has increased exponentially in recent years. As this number has increased, it has lead to concerns about the ethics in adoption practices. These concerns have prompted the Ethiopian government to assess and evaluate their adoption procedures more closely.
Recently, the Ethiopian Federal Court made the decision to decrease adoption court caseloads from a maximum of 32 –50 each day to five each day in order to give the courts time to investigate each case more thoroughly. A decrease to only 5 cases a day will lengthen the adoption process an incredible amount - years!
We are so glad that Ethiopia is desiring to make adoption ethical and it breaks our hearts to know that unethical adoptions were taking place there, but as the adoption community is reacting - 5 cases a day may be extreme.
Please pray with us and for us as we wait to hear the outcome of various meetings this week taking place in Ethiopia. Pray that we would hear the Lord's leading and wisdom in the next steps we should take. We are confident in His call to us to adopt and our hearts are drawn to Ethiopia, so we are just "being still" before Him in prayer and waiting.
I will be in prayer with you! If He drew you to Ethiopia then you will either be one of the 10% or He'll change the situation!
ReplyDeleteYou know God is faithful-if He's led you, He will make a way. Be strong in faith- I know it's hard! We'll continue to pray!
ReplyDeleteMichelle -- my friend Tisra, who I told you about, had a similar thing happen to her family. They had their hearts set on China and were in the process when something like this changed and they had to work their way through it. Eventually, they adopted from India. I don't know if you ever contacted Tisra, but if you haven't and need a buddy to help empathize with you, I know she'd do a good job. Let me know if you need her contact information again.
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