The Vietnamese Government decided not to renew the Vietnam-US child adoption agreement signed in 2005 and stop receiving new adoption applications from US citizens from July 1, 2008, according to Mr. Vu Duc Long, director of the International Child Adoption Department (ICAD) under the Justice Ministry.
The Vietnamese Government decided not to renew the Vietnam-US child adoption agreement signed in 2005 and stop receiving new adoption applications from US citizens from July 1, 2008, according to Mr. Vu Duc Long, director of the International Child Adoption Department (ICAD) under the Justice Ministry.
“The Vietnamese side will continue to process applications it receives before July 1. Meanwhile, the applications for which no suitable baby is found before the expiration of the agreement on September 1, 2008, will be returned to the US,” the director said.
However, after the termination of the agreement, the two sides can still cooperate in child adoption under a new agreement or the Hague Adoption Convention which Vietnam is considering to adopt, Mr. Long said.
He stressed that Vietnam’s law concerning child adoption is strict and transparent, with effective central-to-local supervision mechanism for preventing the abuse of child adoption for improper purposes.
The director also rejected information in the US report on child adoption in Vietnam and said that ICAD had started working with the US Embassy on the report.
The report, released by the US Embassy on April 25, contained distorted and slanderous information with groundless accusations against Vietnamese agencies, including ICAD, for violations in child adoption,
he said.
The US should point out specific cases for both sides to re-examine in order to handle violations, if detected, the director said.-