NOT TO LOSE CHILDREN

On the one hand, there are people who, for one reason or another, are desperate to become parents, and on the other - there are abandoned children and orphans - kids who lost maternal and paternal care. This problem will always remain relevant - as long as humanity exists. How can you help both of them? By stimulating and facilitating the process of adopting children, which needs to be revised and developed in Azerbaijan.

I want a baby!

Sabina Mammadova (name changed) has been unable to have children for many years. Desperate, she and her husband decided to adopt a child. The application procedure is quite lengthy. You must first apply to the guardianship commission of the district executive authorities in your place of residence, which issues a list of required documents (details of the list can be found on the website of the Ministry of Education - author).

After that, the commission appoints an inspector who conducts an interview with the potential adopters and scrutinizes their living conditions and financial situation. That is to say it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive study of the situation ranging from housing and permanent jobs to a thorough medical assessment of the future parents.

On the basis of the inspector's review, the parents can contact the appropriate agency. In their statement to the commission, they should definitely indicate a child of what sex and age they want. Depending on the wishes of the prospective adoptive parents, they are either sent to the Ministry of Health (if they want to adopt a child under three years) or the Ministry of Education (for the adoption of children older than three).

After the successful completion of all phases of "getting" a child (which is a very complicated process in itself), you still need to get in line, because, according to the assurances of official agencies, the number of those wishing to adopt a child significantly exceeds the number of children in relevant institutions. When their turn comes, the family establishes contact with the child, and if there are no problems, the applicants apply to the court, which makes the final decision. Things are not going so smoothly for our heroine. Medical tests showed that she is a carrier of hepatitis. As the hepatologist said, being a carrier is not dangerous. It is just that you cannot be a donor. "But this is the reason why my issue is dragging on," Sabina Mammadova says. However, she did not get a clearly negative answer either, and this complicates the situation, while a long wait and uncertainty can plunge any person into despair.

Another argument cited by official agencies when you want to adopt a child: "We cannot give you an abandoned child, what if his parents turn up tomorrow and demand him back?" In fact, this argument looks like a bureaucratic delay and excuse as the amorphous appearance of the biological parents may take years, which, of course, will not have a positive effect the fate of the child or potential parents.

Purpose - Accessibility

Lawyer Elman Fattah says that "according to the law, any person can adopt a child, except those declared incapacitated by the court". At the same time, the law indicates a number of diseases with which it is impossible to adopt a child. First of all, these are infectious diseases, as well as those that are life-threatening. At the same time, as the lawyer said, even if a potential parent was registered with a tuberculosis, dermatovenerologic or mental hospital, but is deemed healthy at the moment, this should not be a barrier to adoption." The list of "acceptable" diseases also includes hepatitis because, as the lawyer says, although it is a viral disease, it is only transmitted through blood.

Special attention is given to the moment of abandoning the child. The expert said that according to the law, a child rejected by his parents and an abandoned child have equal status. "But we must distinguish between children in orphanages and those whom parents send to a boarding school with visits due to a constrained financial situation and other factors," the lawyer comments. "That is to say the permission of parents or relatives is required if the child maintains a relationship with them and their whereabouts are known."

But when someone wants to adopt a child found on the doorstep of the orphanage, or even worse, on the street, creating obstacles to this is not only unclear, but also cruel. The expert sees the main problem in gaps in legislation. "Gaps and ambiguities in wording create unnecessary red tape, and we must first work out and adjust the legal framework," the lawyer says. Furthermore, the lack of transparency also complicates the process - there is no single database of children and prospective adoptive parents to maintain control over the process of adoption. As a result, all procedures take quite a long period of time - two or three years in the best case.

 For example, in the same Turkey, according to the expert, the adoption process is much simpler: "Working with documents and a positive response do not take so much time and are not so complicated. But at the same time, for some period after the baby gets into a family, social welfare authorities watch him and his family and carefully monitor the living conditions, nutrition and relationships in the family," he said. In our country, says Fattah, no such body exists.

Meanwhile, in 2012 the head of the legal department of the State Committee on the Rights of the Family, Women and Children, Taliya Ibrahimova, talked about the need to establish an agency for permanent control over adopted children as there were cases of violence against them. And this project has already been prepared. As part of this document, it is planned to make sure that the child has the right to choose and accept parents.

The matter is about guardianship authorities

And it's pretty simple. For example, if we take US experience, we should primarily take into account that in this country there are "orphanages", but they are inhabited, in different states, by 5 to 9 per cent of orphaned children. Children without dads and moms are taken care of by the Foster Care guardianship system. Most children (54 per cent) find themselves in foster families. That is to say they live with specially tested and selected temporary adults but without parental rights. Someone takes in orphans for money (the amount of compensation is up to 1,500 dollars per month per child), others - as a charity or due to an excess of free time. The adoption procedure in the US is relatively easy and takes about a year. But surveillance over adopted children by social care authorities is much tougher in the United States. If after a certain time after adoption it is found that the child has fallen into the hands of irresponsible parents and is living in unfavourable conditions, they are immediately deprived of parental rights without the right of adoption. That's to say in this country everything is designed to ensure that there are as few children in orphanages as possible with vigilant monitoring by social care authorities, and to date, the system justifies itself.

In the EU there are no children's homes and boarding schools for healthy children. According to standards approved by the Council of Europe, leaving a child in the biological family should be prioritized and measures should be taken to preserve the family for the child, and if this is not possible, the work should be directed at establishing the child in a family. And 90 per cent of orphans are taken under patronage by families who receive money for that from the state. The child remains in the family until he is adopted, and he will not stay there for long. For example, in Paris, the number of children available for adoption during a year does not exceed 50, while about 700 people annually receive the right to adopt a child. That is why the many couples that have the right to adopt a child are forced to seek children for adoption abroad. Americans, for example, adopt 80,000 of "their own" orphans per year and 20,000 children from other countries.

According to the head of the NGO Alliance for Children's Rights, Nazir Quliyev, in Azerbaijan all adoption cases linger in the courts or potential parents have to wait for their turn for years. "Mechanisms for adoption in many countries are constructed so that the procedure is carried out in the shortest possible time, and in our country, there are no methods to encourage those who want to adopt a child - legal or psychological. In addition, Azerbaijan needs to create effective social care bodies. This will help to ensure transparency in the area of adoption and increase parents' responsibility for adopted children. An extensive database should be established on children and potential parents, which must be constantly updated. And for correct and complete information recorded in the database, regular monitoring should be conducted," he says.

No to orphanages?!

Regarding the elimination of children's homes and boarding schools, it is a big question raised by experts today. According to the idea, there should be few children left in them in Azerbaijan today - in 2006 Azerbaijan adopted a state programme on the transfer of children from state institutions (de-institutionalization) through 2015. At the same time, measures were approved aimed at stimulating the elimination of orphanages and boarding schools, for example, if a child finds himself in them because of the poor financial status of the family. The programme also provides for the establishment of stimulating mechanisms for returning children to their families, their biological parents or guardians (issue of compensation) and turning orphanages into educational institutions of a new type based on a "system of foster families". Despite the fact that there is just a year before the programme ends, it has produced no tangible results.

According to statistics for 2006-2013, 39 families adopted 41 children in Azerbaijan, and eight of them are foreign citizens, four are Azerbaijani families living in Russia, and the rest are citizens of Turkey, Iran, the US and France. Figures obstinately show that, unfortunately, the number of children adopted in our country is very small.

We inherited bodies engaged in institutionalizing orphans and abandoned children from the USSR. Today Azerbaijan must do everything possible to eliminate the system of orphanages in the country - there should be more children adopted and returned to their families. In addition, the problem should be addressed not only according to the actual fact, it is necessary to identify and eliminate its causes. An important role in this is played by the sexual education of young people because abandoned children are often unwanted and unplanned.