Nepal: Children for sale

AL Jazeera 101 East

With weak law enforcement, can foreigners adopting children from Nepal be sure that they are really orphans? 101 East Last Modified: 20 Sep 2011 16:21

Orphaned, abandoned or trafficked? That is the question facing foreigners who wish to adopt Nepali children. International adoption services have provided a lucrative business to poverty-stricken Nepal. But in 2007, Nepal stopped adoptions for two years as it investigated claims of child trafficking. After adoptions resumed, law enforcement remained weak. By the end of 2010, many countries including the US, stopped granting visas to children from Nepal. This was in response to unscrupulous agents falsifying children's status as orphans so they could be adopted overseas. Today, loopholes remain in Nepal's adoption processes and the government has been slow to formulate new policies, creating more problems for children in orphanages. 101 East investigates the scam behind an industry borne from the desire to love a child.