The Vietnam-US Adoption Program To Be Abolished This July

The adoption agreement between Vietnam and the United States is due to be abolished by the Vietnamese government on July 1, 2008. This agreement was up for renewal two months later at the start of September. The ending to this program has been triggered by accusations by the US Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, about corruption in the government as a result of the adoption program in which Vietnamese children will be adopted by American families overseas.

One famous adoptive mother is Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie who with Hollywood actor Brad Pitt adopted a Vietnamese boy recently named Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, back in 2007.

According to the US Embassy, there have been cases in which children have been sold along with parents being pressured to give up their children. However, the Vietnamese government brushed off the accusations and said that the United States has been unfair in its accusations and criticisms.

Jonathan Aloisi, the US ambassador to Vietnam said that this is the worst of all the worst case scenarios. The embassy criticized Vietnam’s government for not policing its adoption system. They say that as a result, there has been much wide-spread corruption.

In a report by the US Embassy in Hanoi, there have been reports of infants being sold by hospitals simply because the mothers could not afford to pay the medical bills. In adoption, there have been people going out to villages in search for babies.

The failure to police its adoption system could also hurt Vietnam’s future standing with the United Nations. At the end of December of 2007, Vietnam was granted a two-year trial membership on the UN Security Council to see if Vietnam is able to take on big roles on a global scale.

Corruption in Vietnam’s adoption program can be counted as a global issue. This could be one of the challenging roles that Vietnam faces during its two-year trial membership.