ISS on international adoption in Vietnam

Last month Barry Andrews, the Minister for Children, announced that a decision on whether to continue negotiations with Vietnam over a new bi-lateral agreement on intercountry adoption would have to wait until the Irish government considered a new Unicef report.

This report was carried out by the International Social Service (ISS) on behalf of the UN body and a draft report was circulated to certain countries involved in adoption in Vietnam. We reported last August that ISS were critical of Helping Hands, the Cork based adoption agency, because of an alleged lack of transparency in the fees charged to couples. ISS was generally critical of the current Vietnamese system and recommended a suspension of all international adoptions from the Vietnam until 2011.

The report still has not been published by Unicef but prospective parents with plans to adopt from Vietnam are keen to find out what it says.

I may be able to put more up at a later stage but for now here are the "summary of key observations" from ISS. The full draft report is obviously much longer and goes in to more detail but I can't put any more up for the moment.

As it is in "draft" form it obviously may be changed before it's final publication, whenever that may be.