When babies become commodities
29 January 2025
I remember when I was 11, a friend told me she'd found a box in the cellar with her birth certificate in it. It listed parents she didn't know. I don't know if she ever found them. The Swiss justice minister now wants to ban international adoptions in Switzerland, as the first country in Europe. The government will debate the issue this week, and little opposition is expected.
However, according to NZZ, experts say that a ban could make illegal adoption flourish all the more. And a member of parliament who is the father of an adopted son from Armenia is also trying to convince the government that a ban would be too extreme. After all, some of the international adoptions also included good stories. But not all of them.
 | Ariela Dürrenberger Illegally adopted babies live all over the world, and many of them are from Georgia. Between 1950 and 2006, around 120,000 Georgian babies were taken from their biological parents and sold. According to the NZZ, the Frank Foundation, the organisation that officially facilitated adoption during the early 2000s, was behind many of these illegal adoptions. Dozens of Georgian mothers were separated from their newborn babies in hospitals, and the children ended up in their new families. For example, in Russia, the US, Germany – and Switzerland. |
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