Scandal upon scandal is bringing international adoption to its knees
06 June 2025
Every time someone digs deeper into international adoption systems, more haunting cases appear. Last year, Denmark paused all international adoptions, while Norway stopped adoptions from the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan for two years. Switzerland is currently debating whether to permanently ban all international adoptions, and the Netherlands is in the process of phasing out the practice.
Now, the debate about a ban is also intensifying in Sweden. On Monday, a government-led investigation revealed serious abuses in Sweden's international adoption activities and recommended a complete halt of adoptions to Sweden.
The inquiry was launched in 2021 in the aftermath of an investigation by Dagens Nyheter (DN). Here it was uncovered how thousands of children adopted by Swedish families had falsified background information, or were even stolen from their biological parents, and sold.
To make matters even worse, the Swedish authorities and governments knew about this child trafficking but failed to act. DN’s investigation revealed that the government back in 1997 received information about child trafficking and corruption in 11 of the 17 adoption countries investigated – and that they turned a blind eye.
 | Amélie Reichmuth International adoptions to Sweden began in the 1950s. Around 60,000 internationally adopted people currently live in Sweden. 40,000 of them were adopted from South Korea, India, Colombia, China, Sri Lanka, Chile, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland, Ethiopia, and Russia. Banning international adoptions is one thing, but the Swedish inquiry also suggested that the government should issue an official apology, set up a national resource centre to support adoptees, and a travel grant of 15,000 Swedish krona (slightly over €1,300) for victims to travel to their country of origin. |
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