Inside Ethiopia’s Adoption Boom

By MIRIAM JORDAN reporting from Stillwater, Minn., and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
| April 28, 2012

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Melesech in Minnesota with her adoptive mother, above. Her dad gave her for adoption a few years ago as Ethiopian adoptions went into overdrive. (Stephen Maturen for The Wall Street Journal)

Many children adopted from Ethiopia, like Melesech Roth, are thriving in loving homes. But the nexus of poverty, money and demand in global adoption can breed dubious practices. WSJ’s Miriam Jordan reports.

Ethiopia has become one of the busiest adoption destinations in the world, thanks in part to loose controls that make it one of the fastest places to adopt a child. Nearly one out of five children adopted by Americans hailed from Ethiopia the past two years, second only to China.

Many youngsters, like Melesech, are thriving in loving homes. Still, the U.S. State Department has cautioned that Ethiopia’s lax oversight, mixed with poverty and the perils of cross-cultural misunderstanding, leaves room for abuse.

“Ethiopia is a classic example of the next boom country where there are warning signs,” said Karen Smith Rotabi, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies global adoption. While there is no proof of widespread fraud, the State Department says, in recent months it began requiring DNA tests and interviews of Ethiopians who have relinquished children, to ensure they are related.

Ethiopian officials say they are cracking down on abuses. Intercountry adoption is now “our last choice. We don’t promote it,” said Zaid Tesfay, deputy chief of the women’s affairs office in Addis Ababa that oversees adoption.

The U.S. State Department said the pace of approvals by Ethiopian authorities seems to be picking up again after a decline. “We expect the numbers will bounce back this year,” said Susan Jacobs, the U.S. State Department’s chief adoption official.

The experience recounted by Mel’s biological father, Mathewos Delebo, shows many of the complexities. Mr. Delebo, a 38-year-old farmer, acknowledges freely giving up his youngest child for adoption. Earlier this year, in the mud-hut village of Le-barfeta in southeastern Ethiopia where he lives, he described why he did it.

Four years ago, he claimed, a stranger—a middleman in the adoption trade—came to his village and persuaded him to give up a child with the promise that she would grow up and send money to support him. “White people are taking children of the poor and helping them get a better life,” Mr. Delebo said he was told. “It will be good for you.”

Mr. Delebo claimed he didn’t understand that he was giving up Mel for good, and thought that she would send money home. Mr. Delebo doesn’t recall the middleman’s name and hasn’t seen him for years.

U.S. government officials say middlemen are often employed by orphanages to find adoption candidates. Mr. Delebo’s middleman can’t be found so there is no way to know his motives.

The middleman’s alleged pitch had its appeal. Mr. Delebo’s first wife, Mel’s biological mother, died of malaria when Mel was a baby. Today Mr. Delebo, his second wife, and his six remaining children live on the 60 cents a day he earns building huts. Drought has ravaged his crops. The family subsists on maize flour, beans and wild bananas, which grow in abundance.

Mr. Delebo said he now suffers from malaria himself—the disease that killed Mel’s birth mother. “I have the same illness,” he said. “Sometimes I feel very hot and sometimes I feel very cold.”

Melesech’s sisters Genete and Selamnesh in the village of of Le-barfeta, Ethiopia (Jiro Ose for The Wall Street Journal)