Hague Convention: Advantages and Provisions

Major Advantages of the Convention and Its Implementation

• Provides, for the first time, formal international and intergovernmental recognition of intercountry adoption.
• Recognizes intercountry adoption, as defined and treated by the Convention, as a means of offering the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family has not been found in the child’s country of origin.
• Establishes a set of internationally agreed minimum requirements and procedures uniformly to govern intercountry adoptions in which a child moves from one Convention party country to another.
• Requires that countries party to the Convention establish a Central Authority to be the authoritative source of information and point of contact in that country, to carry out certain functions, to cooperate with other Central Authorities, and to ensure effective implementation of the Convention in the United States.
• Provides a means for ensuring that adoptions made pursuant to the Convention will generally be recognized and given effect in other party countries.
• Facilitates the adoption by U.S. adoptive parents of children from other party countries through an expanded category of children, safeguarded by the Convention, who will qualify for immigration and automatic naturalization in the United States.

Summary of the Convention's Provisions

• The Convention will apply to adoptions in which children move from one Convention party country to another.
• Such an adoption may take place only if:  the country of origin has established that the child is adoptable, that due consideration has been given to the child’s adoption in its country of origin and an intercountry adoption is in the child’s best interests, and that after counseling, the necessary consents to the adoption have been given freely, AND, the receiving country has determined that the prospective adoptive parents are eligible and suited to adopt, and that the child they wish to adopt will be authorized to enter and reside permanently in that country.
• Adoption agencies and individual providers of international adoption services may be authorized to perform designated functions with regard to individual adoption cases provided they have become Hague Convention accredited or approved.
• Persons wishing to adopt a child resident in another party country must initially apply to a designated authority in their own country to obtain approval for intercountry adoption.
• The Convention provides that, with limited exceptions, there can be no contact between the prospective adoptive parents and any parent or other person/institution that cares for the child until certain requirements have been met.
• The Convention requires the recognition of Convention adoptions certified as such, unless recognition would be manifestly contrary to the country’s public policy, taking into account the best interests of the child.