International Adoption In Russia

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International Adoption in Russia According to President of America’s National Council for Adoption Thomas Atwood, “national boundaries should not prevent abandoned children from having families”. But does the end justify the means? Inter-country adoptions have decreased by 10 percent in the first world countries, according to State Department Figures. In order to find a reason for this phenomenon a case of adopted child from Russia can be of a great use. Last year in Moscow, a 7-year-old boy walked off a plane that arrived to Moscow from Washington all alone with a rucksack of candies and a single typewritten note. A woman from Tennessee who had adopted the child the year before wrote in the note that Artyom, named Justin by his adoptive parents, had emotional problems, and therefore, she no longer wished to parent this child and begged Russia to take him back. This specific case and other instances of Russian children being mistreated abroad prompted the Russian Government to suspend all adoptions of Russian children by Americans. Saving children from poverty is considered to be a sacrificial act, but the rate of international adoptions is shrinking lately due to the inadequacies of adoption policies among countries: viewing the case of an adopted child from Russia can clarify Russian, American and international perspectives on this issue and propose a better solution to improve the conditions of the less-privileged children, since I believe that there’re no real obstacles to prevent parents from adopting international children. From a Russian perspective, the incident seemed unbelievable in the public eye: a mother discarding her young son as if he were a defective product. When the incident happened I was a high school senior in Kazakhstan. Since Kazakhstan has a close nexus with Russia from their long history with the Soviet Union, Kazakhstani media is highly
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