This page aims to promote gender- focused human rights issues and relevant groups. Trans-national adoption has offered a complex but concrete and compassionate solution to addressing many instances of child poverty and homelessness. However, to date, the practice cannot be viewed in isolation from a range of problematic economic, social and cultural dynamics that are profoundly responsible for its sustainability.
For example, C. Register (in Serril 1991) , a mother of two adopted Korean daughters and adoption author of Beyond Good Intentions, argues that ‘Wealth does not entitle us to the children of the poor’ and acknowledges that:
International adoption is an undeserved benefit that has fallen to North Americans, West Europeans and Australians, largely because of the inequitable socio-economic circumstances in which we live. In the long run, we ought to be changing those circumstances (in Serril 1991: 86 - 89) .
The ability of trans-national adoption to offer one small solution to child poverty and homelessness is not in dispute. But the fact remains that it offers no means of prevention. Such adoptions are ultimately made possible by the severe neglect and lack of political will in governments and other bodies of power to put a range of support and protection mechanisms in place so that marginalised and economically disadvantaged families can remain bonded....
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