Interfax: Most orphans who did not go to U.S. were adopted by Russian families – diplomat

MOSCOW. Nov 26 (Interfax) – Most Russian orphans whose adoption by American families was prohibited by the Dima Yakovlev law have already been adopted by Russian citizens or have been returned to their biological mothers, Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s human rights envoy, told Interfax on Tuesday.

“Most of these children have already been transferred to their new Russian families. I do not know the exact statistics, but it is quite a large number. According to Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard 23 complaints lodged by U.S. families who were banned by the Dima Yakovlev law from adopting children from Russia.

The Strasbourg-based court asked the Russian authorities to provide information about these children and explain how this adoptions ban correlates with the bilateral Russian-U.S. adoptions agreement, which should remain in force for a year longer after one side announces its plans to pull out of it.

When commenting on this report, Dolgov said that Russia had asked the U.S. authorities to provide detailed information on the potential adoptive parents of Russian children who were stopped from traveling to the U.S. by the enactment of the Dima Yakovlev law.

“We asked Americans to provide us with concrete information detailing the extent of their [potential adoptive parents’] ties with these children, as well as the number of these people. But we did not receive any serious and concrete information from them. The figures given by them varied seriously as well,” the diplomat said.

“It turned out that the majority of potential adoptive families had not even seen the children. They had not even come to Russia to meet the children. But how can one forge long-distance ties with children?” Dolgov said. “Americans believe that they established these ties, but our specialists think that it is hardly possible to establish ties with children in such a way,” he said. Russian orphans whose cases still lacked a court ruling were stopped by Russian legislation from traveling to the United States, the diplomat said.

“Naturally, it is totally obvious that these children cannot go there. In accordance with Russia laws, not a single court is now able to authorize a Russian child’s transfer to U.S. adoptive parents,” Dolgov said. “The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was signed by Russia, unconditionally prioritizes national legislation over international law. It means that we obey both this convention and Russian laws,” he said.

[featured image is file photo]