International adoptions face hurdles, leaving little hope for many orphaned children

Adopting children across international borders has become a very difficult process. The World’s intern Maria Noble Valdez delved into the nuances behind the challenges, and also shared her own personal story of being adopted by American parents as a child.

I was adopted from Saint Petersburg, Russia, 18 years ago when I was 5 years old. Being adopted at an age past infancy, I have memories of my life before and during the adoption process, and it is a topic my parents and I continue to discuss. They’ve told me that my adoption had some mild bureaucratic issues, but that it proceeded over three years relatively smoothly.

These days, however, international adoptions are practically impossible for families to navigate, leaving thousands of children orphaned and with little hope of a better life. The process remains complicated, even with so many resources and organizations like UNICEF and Save the Children available. The two organizations did not respond to requests for comment. But some experts offered their explanation for the flaws in the system, which include politics, miscommunication and even outdated beliefs.

Statistics show that more than 99% of orphans will never get adopted.

Ryan Hanlon, the former president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, said one of the first issues is that there is no “universal definition” for what an orphan is. He believes an orphan is “a child who is living permanently outside of parental care.” Hanlon added that regardless of what society considers an orphan, global adoptions are failing on many fronts, and that this is clear because “there are very few adoptions globally relative to the number of children who are living without parents.”

Michelle Reed, who lives in Florida, worked for an adoption agency when she began her own process of adopting three boys from Haiti about nine years ago. The brothers lived in an orphanage in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Given the gang violence in Haiti at the time, she thought receiving government support would not be an issue to ensure the safety of children.

She came to realize, though, that all of the heavy lifting had to be done by her.

“I really felt like I had to jump through all these hoops for the government, yet when it came down to it … they were unwilling to help in any manner,” Reed said.

Furthermore, Reed felt the government simply didn’t care. She explained that through research and legal advice, she found the government had lied to her multiple times, and even admitted doing so — like when the US State Department had lied about the legality of getting her boys to safety, and then did nothing to rectify the situation.

People at the Department of State also often said they wanted to “follow the law,” but when she provided them with evidence of the next steps to take — including Haitian adoption laws that provided a clear pathway to bring her children to the US — her efforts were rejected.

She even had the backing of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who would send letters on her behalf and on behalf of other families adopting, to no avail. After pointing out lies and discrepancies to the State Department under the Biden Administration, she was harshly denied emergency assistance.

Reed recalled being told in writing that she couldn’t receive any form of emergency relief since her adopted children lived in Haiti and were technically still Haitian citizens, but if they were to die before reaching the US, their remains could be repatriated to her.

Reed recounted how appalled she was, clarifying with the State Department that the only way the children would be US citizens was when they physically crossed the border into the United States. It was the only step left to complete the adoption process and bring them to safety fully.

Reed’s story is not unique; she’s watched other families around her in the US fight the legal system just as hard as she did.

She eventually brought her boys to Florida to live with her, one by one, between 2022 and early 2025.

Navigating the legal process and dealing with paperwork are the most complicated parts of adopting children into the US.

Diane Kunz, executive director of the National Council for Adoption, explained that many families have difficulty ensuring citizenship for their child at the state and even county levels.

She used the analogy of an Oreo cookie: “You start with the chocolate part at the top, which is the American requirement to be able to adopt a child. In the middle are the sending country requirements. Then, you go back to American requirements. Just because you adopt a child does not mean they’re [automatically] a citizen.”

She explained that there have been many “upsetting cases” where children never became citizens due to miscommunication. For example, judges often congratulate families, telling them their child is officially theirs, just as biological children are. However, they fail to mention that additional requirements are needed to ensure the child is a citizen of the United States.

Kunz is an adoptive mother herself and was once a corporate attorney. She now works to help families navigate the adoption process. She stated a major challenge many families navigate during their adoption processes is that the laws continue to change, leaving room for complications and other issues. A major contributing factor to this is geopolitics.

Ryan Hanlon says some nations stopped allowing Americans to adopt children because of a handful of abuse cases decades ago. However, in those cases, new laws have been passed to ensure adoptees are safe. Hanlon said that for countries that do not allow modern-day adoptions because of those reasons is “foolish” because it fails to address the needs of present-day children.

Certain countries have even banned US citizens altogether from adopting from them. The country I was adopted from, Russia, has become one of the places that stopped inter-country adoptions for US citizens.

The ruling came between 2012 and 2013 after Congress sanctioned Russia for the murder of a prominent attorney who exposed massive fraud. Diane Kunz, of the National Council for Adoption, said that made the attorney Sergei Magnitsky an enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I do believe Putin and his inner circle rooted around for something to do that would be painful and hurtful to Americans,” Kunz said.

Russia maintains the ban is to protect children from abuse in the United States. Meanwhile, other countries — including China, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Cambodia and Nepal — have banned international adoptions, as well.