65% of kids adopted by foreigners have special needs: Government

Adducing statistics between April 2012 and March 2015, it said that 12,606 children were given in domestic adoption as opposed to 1,112 children for inter-country adoption.

[related-post]

Of the 1,112 children, 190 children with special needs were given up for adoption in 2012-13 and this number rose to 283 and 253 in the next two years. Such adoption has witnessed a consistent increase in the last three years and their share in the total inter-country adoptions has risen from 62 per cent to 68 per cent in 2014-15.

On domestic adoption, CARA said that around 5,000 children were given up for in-country adoption in 2012-13 but this number had dropped to about 4,000 in the last two years.

CARA was responding to a PIL which sought a moratorium on inter-country adoption of Indian children, alleging overseas child trafficking in the garb of adoption.

The PIL by NGOs Advait Foundation and Sakhee accused CARA and other agencies of being lax and some time also complicit in this racket. It claimed that many children being illegally taken away to foreign countries faced post-adoption abuse. It also asked for a scheme for repatriation and root search of such children.

Opposing a moratorium on inter-country adoption, CARA told the court that adoption is compulsory for ensuring ‘right to family’ for orphan, abandoned and surrendered children. Putting such children in other institutions or under foster care, it said, would tantamount to their “moral abandonment” since such mechanism cannot substitute the need for a family.