Russia has a website featuring 180,000 children available for adoption. You can search by gender, eye and hair colour, and view photos and profiles online.
Ethiopia also has a crisis of orphans, many of them AIDS orphans. They're trying to smooth the official channels as much as possible, because the state realises that it's their only hope for survival. Ethiopia is so poor and ravaged a country, they cannot possibly offer these children any more than eventual starvation.
The situation between Australia and Indonesia is escalating rapidly.
I know there's a crisis but I still find it horrible - being able to pick a child to your specifications. My Aunt did that - she even changed their names. They were 6 and 3 at the time. Must have been a nightmare for the kids - they didn't even speak english.
Posted by: Emba at June 4, 2005 03:32 PMThe *idea* of it squicks me a bit too. I guess rather than shopping for kids that'll set off your wallpaper it might be more about finding someone who looks like the kid you thought you could have one day. Some cousins of my mothers adopted 3 sisters from Romania when they had their big controversy about a decade back - insta-family which was probably overwhelming particularly as the girls came with a pre-packaged set of developmental problems and some health issues. But you'd have to be pretty heartless to separate siblings and cart one off to another country.
Posted by: Rachel at June 5, 2005 12:36 PMYeah, I know some people who adopted a brother and sister from (Russia? Somewhere previously Soviet, anyway). They didn't know any of the language either.
I guess, for myself, I've read a number of autobiographies by children who have been international adoptees - specifically, a boy from Russia (adopted at 10), a Chinese girl (adopted at 6), an Ethiopian boy (adopted at 13) - and I think the most consistent theme was: no matter how many mistakes their parents made (nothing terrible, but some of them, you had to wonder if the parents would have been better off with a puppy or something) - they were so GLAD to be out of an orphanage and in a country that gave them a future. They were well aware of how lucky they were, maybe because they were a bit older at adoption.
As regards the database - hell, that's what most couples are doing when they go and look at the kids in the flesh - they have an 'idea' in their heads. Another might catch their eye, but they do have some criteria. And with 180,000 entries, you've got to start sorting them somehow.