Briefing Note: Safeguarding search for origins from illicit post-adoption practices
For many adoptees, the right to know one’s origins can only be achieved through search activities in the State of origin, especially when records available in the receiving State prove to be incomplete or spurious. Search activities can involve multiple actors including adoptive families, Central Adoption Authorities and other State bodies and institutions, Accredited Adoption Bodies, civil registry, police, tribunals, lawyers, residential care providers, health professionals and facilities, private investigators and associations, travel agents, interpreters etc, each with their own mandate, interests and priorities. Adoptee identity issues are complicated and accentuated with the ever-growing recognition in international and national reports of systemic illegal intercountry adoptions over the entire modern era of intercountry adoption. State responsibilities are heightened due to this documented history of systemic illegal intercountry adoption.
