Georgia: The Adoption Headache

New bill aims to cut down on queue of parents wanting to adopt.

By Tamar Kadagidze in Tbilisi (CRS No. 372 04-Jan-07)

“Hello, hasn’t the law been made simpler yet?” asked a man in the reception room of the department for children with special needs at the Georgian education ministry. “I submitted my application for adoption two years ago and never got a reply... I was told that the law had been simplified... Please, explain what the matter is, do I have any hope?”

“There’s nothing new for you so far,” an official answered. “We’ve also been waiting for amendments to be made to the law. You should come back later.”

Salome Chichinadze, senior specialist in the department, says that every day more than twenty people come to the department to complain they have received no reply to their adoption applications. She blamed this on the 1997 law on adoption, which she said was “very inflexible and unworkable”.

Under the current adoption law, three years must pass before abandoned children are eligible for adoption and their parents have the right to block the adoption, even if they do not look after them.

As a result, Chichinadze said Georgia suffers acutely from the problem of “social orphans”, children who are forced to live in the street because their parents refuse to care for them but oppose their adoption by someone else.

“According to the civil code, in a case like this a suit must be filed in court to strip the parent of the right to custody of the child,” said Chichinadze. “But there has been no such precedent so far. This is a flaw in the law.”

This is set to change in a new draft law, which has already gone through a first reading in parliament and should be on the statute book by the spring.

Under the proposed legislation, a maximum period of a year is set after which a child in this situation must be made available for adoption.

And the bill aims to streamline the adoption process for children that have been completely abandoned by their parents to three months.

“In a word, the new law is focused on protecting the interests of a child,” said Chichinadze. “Nowadays the state gives priority not to parents, but to children, who have all the rights, both civil and social.”

Marina Girkelidze, 42, lives in the town of Ozurgeti in western Georgia. Shortly before the New Year, she came to Tbilisi, hoping that she would be able to adopt a child at last. “I’ve been to all official establishments in the past six years, and they’ve said there are no children to adopt,” she told IWPR. “Meantime, almost every day they show on television a child thrown away into a garbage bin or somewhere else. The orphanages are overcrowded, and any of these children could become mine.”

Marina decided to adopt a child six years ago and spent a long time compiling all the necessary documentation to submit to the care and fostering agency.

“All my documents are in complete order,” she said. “They even came to see me in my house to make sure that I was eligible to adopt a child. Since then, I’ve been waiting to be called. I have no right to find a child on my own, this would be an offence... My whole life has passed by in this waiting.”

Marina is one of many people who have spent years on a database of people wishing to adopt a child.

“The law has put numerous obstacles in the path of Georgian adoptive parents,” said Chichinadze. “They spend years waiting to be allowed to adopt a child. Imagine how strong the wish and hope of these people is, since they still come to us.”

A children’s home on Nutsubidze Street, in Tbilisi, is the only one in Georgia. Here, children abandoned by parents and orphans under three years are given refuge. The outside of the building looks impressive, but inside the plaster is falling off the walls, the lighting is dim and there is an unpleasant smell in the air. The only bright spot is a beautiful Christmas tree in the entrance hall - a present from a charitable businessman. Only the cry of a baby makes it clear that children live here.

Currently, there are 97 charges in the home. Two-thirds of them are children with disabilities.

Lado is three years old and has Down’s syndrome. His mother left him in the children’s home, when he was only several months old. She never comes to see him, but she has not consented to have him adopted either.

A guard at the home told us about two-year-old Mari, “I heard what sounded like a cat’s meow at night. I paid no attention to it at first, but the sound wouldn’t stop, and I had my doubts. I went to where the sound was coming from and found a baby in a rubbish bin outside.”

According to official statistics, ten to 12 children are found abandoned in the street every year.

Lisa, an American, was feeding a little girl, who will legally become hers in a few days’ time. The child’s legs are deformed, but this does not scare Lisa, who already has a four-year-old adopted daughter. “The main reason for these children being unwell is a lack of love and hugs,” she said.

Irina Bekuridze, director of the children’s home, agreed, “It’s true, they don’t get enough hugs here... The main thing is to feed them on time and change their nappies, there’s no time left for caressing them.”

Bekuridze said that Lisa had successfully passed all the adoption procedures, got a positive assessment and was now awaiting a final court decision. In the meantime, she was spending most of her time with the little girl, whom she had not given a name to yet.

According to official data, foreigners tend to adopt children with physical and mental defects. “If a child has a defect and he or she is being rejected in Georgia, the education ministry has the authority to reduce the time of the adoption procedure, as it is desirable to have child adopted at an early age, because their health is the main priority,” said Chichinadze.

Tamar Kadagidze is a freelance journalist in Tbilisi.