Hague Convention...what is it?

The Hague Convention is a treaty approved in 1993, at The Hague, by 66 member countries. Basically it sets agreed-upon norms and procedures for countries that participate in inter country adoption. It is to protect the children, birth parents and adoptive parents involved. The US signed the treaty in 1994 but had never ratified it until recently.

What is the impact? All agencies that want to facilitate inter country adoptions in another convention country will need to be accredited.

See the below email received by CHI recently:

"On Friday we sent you an email that Children's Hope, to our great surprise, was denied Hague approval. It was on the basis of an incomplete corrective action plan in one state that we thought was totally resolved. .This is nothing new but something unfinished. We are appealing the decision but we are also preparing details for you on how this affects your adoption process or even if it does affect it. Each country is different so your country program director will let you know later today the information you need. As you can imagine this was a complete shock for us as well - as we believed that all requirements were in perfect order.
As you already know, last year we made the discovery that improper procedures by two staff within our Russia department were done in the St. Louis office. There was misuse of notary privileges and miss-handled paperwork to Russia. Children’s Hope began an investigation into what is a violation of the principles and ethics of our agency. On the date of discovery, we immediately notified the Division of Family and Children’s Services in Missouri, which evaluated and issued a Corrective Action Plan to establish a proper checks and balance of notarized documents within the agency, which was completed to their satisfaction.
Our investigation last summer found that 10 documents in 6 states were affected and so we began the process of notifying those states and undertaking any review of our license that those states deemed necessary. Except for two states, this license review process was complete within 3 months. We however continued to work with Kansas and Illinois to follow any requirement they thought necessary. Children's Hope believed that all requirements had been met in Kansas while still waiting for Illinois to finalize what turned out to be a 9 month process. Therefore, we could not meet all the Hague requirements in the first round of approvals for the Hague on February 29, 2008, so Children's Hope was issued a "Pending Status" from the Hague Commission.
When Illinois finalized their corrective actions and issued our new permanent 4 year license in June, we immediately applied for Hague approval. They reviewed our case on July 9th. On that very same day!, we found out through our new KS Office Director that we were not in compliance in all points as we had thought. This meant - as we found out on July 17, 2008, that our Hague approval was denied! The problem seems to be that we were deemed non-compliant to the regulations required for domestic adoption agency licensing in the state of Kansas even though we are not a domestic – but international adoption agency. In an international agency, for example, it is impossible for the social worker to visit the child before it is placed, which is one of the regulations. We had already instituted what we thought were all the requirements of the state. We greatly respect those in authority in the state of KS and are only sorry that we did not get the communication in STL until we had applied for the COA to review our application. We have been and always will be committed to the highest moral and ethical principles.
We immediately began talks with the Kansas officials to resolve any licensing issues so we can re-apply to the COA for Hague Accreditation within the next few weeks. But it is the discretion of COA to schedule our application for review, or make us wait up to one year before re-applying.
In addition we are in talks with our friends in Holt International how we can work under and through them to assist any families in application and those whose dossiers have not been submitted – and that possibility looks very positive.
We are going forward in the faith that this will soon be resolved. We are committed to you and so appreciate those of you who have expressed your understanding. We regret that we did not have the time to compose and share on Friday what we are sharing in this email. At that time, we were just wanting you to hear an announcement from us – and not someone else – until we had more information"