January 14, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 13, 1426

BUCHAREST: Theodor’s mother abandoned him in hospital soon after giving birth. Three years later, the dark-haired boy with a shy smile is living with a foster mother in a bare apartment in Bucharest, still waiting to be adopted.

Theodor’s story, and the tales of tens of thousands of other Romanian orphans, pull at the heart-strings in a country where adoption and child care were crippled and corrupted by years of dictatorship and the graft-tainted society it spawned.

Romania, which hopes to join the European Union next year, has taken radical steps to clean up its act, eager to banish the haunting images of vast, filthy orphanages that were exposed to the world after the 1989 fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

But a 2005 ban on foreign adoptions has drawn criticism as well as praise. More heartache ensued as hopeful couples found their efforts to adopt cut off during a three-year moratorium that preceded last year’s ban.

And while Theodor faces no risk of being sold to the highest bidder as was the case in the adoption industry for years after Ceausescu’s fall, he is unlikely to find a permanent home.

Many Romanians are too poor to adopt a child, and Theodor is also a Gypsy, who often face discrimination.

“I would prefer for him to be adopted by a good family, and if he isn’t, I will raise him as my own,” says Maria Moise, Theodor’s foster mother who is paid around $130 a month to look after him, plus money for food and toiletries.

“But I can’t adopt him, I can’t afford it.”

Romania introduced the ban in an effort to quash EU concerns that the country was too corrupt to prevent baby trafficking during foreign adoptions. The country says the decision has encouraged more Romanians to adopt, with families queuing up.

Critics say cumbersome bureaucracy and poverty in the former Soviet bloc state hobble the process — leaving children like Theodor with little hope of a permanent home.

“Would I adopt a child one day? It is very difficult,” says Flavius Pica, a 20-year-old student who volunteers at a centre for homeless children on the outskirts of Bucharest. “Food is expensive and most of the people who adopt are rich. Should we allow adoptions abroad? Why not?”

The government says around 80,000 children — more than three quarters of them aged over 10 — remain in state care in Romania, where the average monthly wage is about $250.

About 50,000 live in some type

of foster home or with extended families, and the rest in mostly small

care centres.

When Ceausescu was ousted, more than 100,000 children were in state orphanages. His ban on abortions and contraceptives — an effort to fill factories by forcing families to have at least five children — produced thousands of unwanted babies.

Corrupt officials at orphanages and judges sold off children as Western couples flooded in to adopt in the early 1990s.

“Under Ceausescu, the state raised the children,” said Theodora Bertzi, head of the government’s adoption agency. “Now we do all we can to keep each child with the family.

“The criticism after 1990 was grounded. But we had a lot of EU and US funds and reforms were quick,” she says.

Romania says its child care reforms aim to keep children with their families in a familiar environment and culture.

“A child should live in its culture and have access to its past,” says Bertzi. “Poverty is not a good reason to separate a child from its family.”

But critics say the reforms are suffering from the same obstacles which plague efforts to modernize the poor economy.

Inefficient institutions, bureaucracy and lack of accountability make it difficult to process children’s files.

“Thousands of children linger in maternity clinics and they are not available for adoption because their paperwork is not up to date,” says Linda Robak from Wilton, Connecticut, who runs an advocacy group, For the Children-SOS, in the United States.

“No one wants to spend time and effort to take these kids to court to make them available for adoption.”

Robak, who adopted a Romanian girl in 2001, says the reforms mean children are being forced back into unprepared families.

“Biological families are being coerced to take children,” she said. “If my daughter was in foster care (and was sent back to her biological family) she would be sleeping on the floor in a one-room shack with no running water or indoor toilet. You would cry if you saw the place where her family lives.”

There are hundreds of foreign parents who would love to adopt Romanian children but whose applications have been frozen.

Rod Wallace, from Santa Rosa, California, met a five-year-old Hungarian Roma boy in an orphanage around five years ago and later decided he would try to adopt him despite the moratorium, hoping to win an exception.

He spent lots of time with the boy, who is 11 now but small for his age because of malnutrition and years in institutions, but his application was too late to qualify as an exception.

“The boy is hanging on ... he calls us Mom and Dad. He said to us the other day, ‘Do I have to wait another year? When can I come?’” Wallace said. “We have a window of opportunity to help him, but it has to happen soon.”

The European parliament said in December that Romania should review applications made during the moratorium. The United States says Romania should allow interrupted cases to proceed.

But the Romanian government, with backing from many European politicians, says it plans no change.

“The most important thing is finding the right family for a child ... And finding a family means looking around within the community,” said Ana Maria Gomes, a European parliament deputy from Portugal.—Reuters