A topic near-and-dear to my heart, and an organization I spent my college years with, Journey’s End Refugee Services is holding a two-day celebration from June 20 to 21 for World Refugee Day. Here is the link to the website and the announcement listed below. The picture is from WRD 2006, but I absolutely love it.

Come Celebrate

WORLD REFUGEE DAY
June 20 & 21

With:
Episcopal Migration Ministries of WNY
St. John’s-Grace Episcopal Church
Journey’s End Refugee Services
Vive LaCasa Refugee Shelter

Friday 6/20
Attend an Inter-Faith service with refugee testimonies,
prayers, choir pieces, and concluded with a candlelight
vigil/walk to Colonial Circle.
Begins at 8:00PM –St. John’s-Grace
Lafayette & Colonial Circle(Richmond Ave.)
Bring a personal care item, or household item, to donate to the
refugee agencies!

Saturday 6/21
The celebration continues on Bidwell Pkwy. With musical
entertainment throughout the afternoon, refugee agency
displays and awards, films inside the church, liquid
refreshments, and others. Meet and greet refugees.
Begins at 12PM and ends at 5PM.
Bring a personal care item, or household item, to donate to the
refugee agencies!

Refugees in Western New York contribute to the community, and have an enduring and contagious spirit. I’ll still be in Ukraine when this happens, but I would encourage anyone to attend either of the days and get to know people with a tremendous life experience.

On June 4th, the U.S. Department of State released its annual Trafficking in Persons Report.

Secretary Rice remarked on the report with the following:

“The 2008 report covers more countries than ever — 170 total. It is the most comprehensive global compendium of human trafficking trends and efforts by foreign governments to eliminate this crime… And as required by Congress, the Trafficking in Persons Report examines both labor slavery and sex trafficking.

For the first time, in this year’s report, we closely examined prosecution data and made a disturbing discovery: Although more countries are addressing sex trafficking through prosecution and convictions, the petty tyrants who exploit their laborers rarely receive serious punishment. We see this as a serious shortcoming, and as we move our efforts forward, we and our allies must remember that a robust law enforcement response is essential.

This report is a key tool in our efforts to abolish human trafficking — by raising awareness, offering clear recommendations to combat these crimes, and offering advice and aid from the United States.”

Full post on the Human Trafficking Project

Two days ago, students from Gaza received a letter stating that their Fulbright scholarship had been revoked. In fact, the State Department withdrew all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza, who were supposed to be going to the U.S. to study during this coming academic year. And no one really seems to know what’s going on or why the State Department canceled without any apparent attempts to ensure they were allowed out. Why do I believe this? Because now that the New York Times has released the article, all of the sudden people are looking up from their desks going, “What happened?”

According the Times article, “when a query about the canceled Fulbrights was made to the prime minister’s office on Thursday, senior officials expressed surprise. They said they did, in fact, consider study abroad to be a humanitarian necessity and that when cases were appealed to them, they would facilitate them. They suggested that American officials never brought the Fulbright cases to their attention.”

And then AFP reported that Secretary Rice had no idea this had happened.

“We really have to be concerned about the future of Palestinians and the future Palestine,” Rice told reporters during a visit in Iceland.

“And if you cannot engage young people and give them a complete horizon to their expectations and to their dreams, then I don’t know that there would be any future for Palestine” or the people of the region, Rice said.

“It was a surprise to me and I am definitely going to look into it… I’m a big supporter of Fulbrights for people in places that have been isolated from the international community and we will see what we can do.”

So who knew what was going on and pulled the plug? The Times article said that the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem canceled the scholarships “out of concern” that the grant money would go to waste in light of the Israeli government’s crackdown on isolating Gaza beginning at the end of last year. The article also cited that internal State Department problems may have contributed to the lack of effort to assist these students:

The State Department and American officials in Israel refused to discuss the matter. But the failure to persuade the Israelis may have stemmed from longstanding tensions between the consulate in Jerusalem, which handles Palestinian affairs, and the embassy in Tel Aviv, which manages relations with the Israeli government.

You would think that if the awarded scholarships were in jeopardy for an entire area, that the Consulates of the U.S. would step up their efforts before canceling a whole program, and in the process, dealing a huge blow to the students who had received these awards based on their merits and leaving the mess to senior officials and the Secretary of State who probably could have intervened before this fiasco. Especially because it appears even if the Israeli government allows them out at this point (along with the dozens of other students with Western scholarships and offers to study abroad), the Fulbright grantees will not be able to go.

However, there is no confirmation that the money has been reallocated and Israel said yesterday that they would reconsider the situation. So there may still be hope to reinstate these Fulbright students.

Some of the current Fulbrighters have put together an open letter to the State Department and the IIE, which administers the Fulbright Program, to reinstate these fellows and to do whatever is in their power to reverse this backward move on the part of the program. So far, eighty former and current Fulbrighters have signed it. The site also includes links to the latest news on the situation. Although it is true that some of this depends on the Israeli government and not entirely on the shoulders of the State Department, it seems there is willingness on the part of Israel to reexamine this without too much complication. In fact, there seems to be misunderstanding as to why this happened in the first place.

Hopefully the situation will be rectified in time to give these students the opportunity they’ve earned without having to wait another year. The Fulbright’s goals are to increase “mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries” and it serves as “a context to provide a better understanding of U.S. views and values, promotes more effective binational cooperation and nurtures open-minded, thoughtful leaders, both in the U.S. and abroad, who can work together to address common concerns.” It is pretty difficult to accomplish that goal when grants are being canceled without much effort to ensure the ability of the student to start their studies.

UPDATE!

I have just heard from my fellow Fulbrighter in Gaza and he has told me that just a few hours ago, they received this message from the Consulate in Jerusalem:

The US Department of State is working to secure exit permits for you to travel to Jerusalem for your visa interview and for final travel to the United States in order to participate in the Fulbright program this year. We are working closely with the Government of Israel in order to secure its cooperation in this matter.

Therefore, I’m pleased to inform you that the Bureau of Educational and Cultural affairs (ECA) of the US Department of State has instructed Amideast in Washington to continue the placement process at a US university for the 2008-09 academic year for your Fulbright program nomination.

We will notify you when your placement has been arranged to begin the next steps in the grant process.

WOOHOO! Such great news. Although as my contact pointed out, there are still hundreds of students that were granted study through other U.S. programs that are still trapped by this isolation policy that the U.S. has not been to negotiate their exit.

Today, we will celebrate this small victory. These students will not only become an asset to the academic and cultural communities of the U.S., but will also help shape the future and international contributions of their country. Good luck to all of them.

From the International Institute of Buffalo:

Fundraiser for Burmese Cyclone Victims

This Sunday, May 18, 1:00–4:00 pm

International Institute of Buffalo

864 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo

Featuring traditional Burmese music and dance, ethnic food, a silent auction, and handcrafted items and artwork available for sale. Burmese refugees living in Buffalo are hosting this event to aid families, friends, and countrymen in Burma suffering the effects of this disaster. Proceeds will go to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to be used specifically for humanitarian aid for this tragedy.

Donation requested at the door. Open to the public. For more information, call 883-1900 x319, email dbeehag@iibuff.org, or visit www.iibuff.org.

If you would like to make a donation to help victims of Cyclone Nargis but cannot attend the event on Sunday, you can make a check out to the International Institute of Buffalo, 864 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14209

Please write “Burma fundraiser” in the memo

Here is the link to the UNHCR page, and under the news links, you can find out what they’re doing in Myanmar to assist victims.

I know I raised some alarm with my last post on racial issues in Ukraine, and there is good reason to be alarmed. But at the same rate, ground has been gained. A couple weeks ago, there was the first conviction of a violent crime using Article 161 of the Criminal Code:

The Darnytsky District Court on Friday issued its verdict over the killing of Nigerian national Kunyon Myevi Hodi* in Kyiv near the metro station “Poznyaki” on 25 October 2006.

Of the group of four people whom the criminal investigation unit believed involved in the attack or present at it, one appeared as a witness and one came under an amnesty as being underage.

The other two were both convicted.

One was found guilty of murder (Article 115 § 2 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and of inciting racial hatred and enmity and denigrating a person’s ethnic honour and dignity (Article 161 § 3) and received a four year term of imprisonment. Since the sentences are to be partially merged (under Article 70 of the Criminal Code), he was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment. The sentence is counted from 15 November 2006.

The other was found guilty of inciting racial hatred and enmity and denigrating a person’s ethnic honour and dignity (Article 161 § 2) and received a four and a half year term of imprisonment. This sentence is counted from November 2006.

In passing sentence, among other considerations, aggravating circumstances were taken into account – the fact that at the time of the crime, the men were in a state of alcoholic intoxication (Article 67 of the Criminal Code)

The defendants only partially admitted guilt. They have 15 days from 18 April to appeal against the verdict.

* In all the reports at the time, the name was given differently - Hodnoys Myevi. The victim was 47 years old and had lived in Ukraine for a number of years. He had graduated from the Institute of National Economy, defended his PhD thesis in economics and was married to a Ukrainian.

As well, there have been two more cases opened.

Today, I was able to get a bit more imagery on growing understanding among people in Ukraine. Today was Dehn Evropi (Europe Day) in Kyiv and there were a couple dozen tents and stages set up all the way down Khreshatik representing European countries, EU institutions, and a few others. Among the few others was the Diversity Initiative. We had hand-outs, a quiz, a skit about inter-racial marraige, and we also had an African drumming group. During the drumming, this happened:

These lovely Ukrainian ladies jumped into the circle during a drumming dance contest, and showed everyone what was up. A small reminder that this is not a foregone problem and that a little interaction goes a long way.

Burma (Myanmar) is in the news again for the suffering of its people, this time at the hands of a disastrous cyclone. On Saturday, Cyclone Nargis hit hard causing at least five states and the city of Rangoon to be declared disaster zones. At this point, the exact death toll is unknown, but just in the last day it has gone up from a little over 300 to now close to 10,000 and still counting. Whole villages have been wiped out and hundreds of thousands of people are without shelter, clean water, and basic supplies. Profiteering is taking its toll as the prices for goods are drastically increasing.

Aid organizations and foreign governments are scrambling to put together packages, as well as ship out stocks of supplies already prepared for natural disasters. The government of Burma has said they are willing to accept this aid, but it is hard to say what the future will bring for the affected populations, especially those completely cut off by destroyed infrastructure. In fact, these outlying areas are “still under negotiation” as to whether the UN and other aid organizations will be allowed to go there. The aid will also be difficult to watch from the outside as many major news organizations are still not allowed to report out of Burma.

Even in cases where countries have infrastructure, money, and the capability to respond to natural disasters, as Americans, we know what a lack of organization and political will can do to prevent assistance from reaching those most deeply affected by severe natural disasters. And if the death toll continues to rise in Burma, it will be the biggest natural disaster in Asia since the Tsunami of 2004.

Disasters of this magnitude take a great deal of time to recover from. For example, India, despite having a more modern infrastructure and more money than Burma, is still dealing with the remnants of the Tsunami in 2007, almost three years after the storm hit. This is especially the case for Indians among the poorest classes living in the affected areas. According to a report by the United Nations in December of 2007, the “recovery effort is still in full swing” as “Reconstruction has taken longer than originally anticipated” even though the national and local governments of the affected areas are credited with being helpful in the effort. Although the recovery seems to be almost complete, these populations, in the mean time, have been exposed to risks of human trafficking, setbacks in their education and livelihoods, among other issues. Not to mention this disaster affected mostly women and children. Seventy-five percent of the people killed by the tsunami were women and children.

Now, let’s take the situation and turn to Burma, where the disaster is at least equal, if not more devastating. India lost about 12,000 people, hundreds of thousands more were displaced, about 100,000 completely lost their homes. So far, Burma has lost about 10,000 with the number expected to grow as more accurate reports come in. The disaster zones encompass areas that are (were) home to about 24 million Burmese. And instead of the world’s biggest democracy working with foreign governments and aid organizations to organize the delivery of food, supplies, and basic needs, there is the military junta with a less-than-perfect record on human rights even in fair weather.

In fact, the Burmese government has decided to push ahead with Saturday’s vote on the Constitution despite the fact that almost half of Burma’s population are living in areas declared disaster zones. This is also despite the fact that some areas have reported not even so much as seeing the authorities come to their area to patrol and assist people. People have already expressed their frustrations with this blatant expression of indifference on the part of the government about the well being of its population:

Pictures on state TV show security services working to clear roads but in Rangoon and elsewhere there are complaints that the response to the disaster has been weak.

“Where are the soldiers and police? They were very quick and aggressive when there were protests in the streets last year,” a retired government worker complained to Reuters news agency.

Even if it seemed likely that this vote would have a positive effect on the freedoms and rights of the Burmese people (the general consensus seems to be that it will not), the fact that at least hundreds of thousands will not be able to participate already delegitimizes the results.

But as a depressing article from the BBC expresses:

Whatever they think of their leaders right now, the people of Burma desperately need their help.

Some photos and videos from the disaster:

Photo taken during the cyclone:

Video of storm footage from the AP:

Video of the aftermath from Al Jazeera (still allowed to report inside Burma):

Aftermath pictures from the BBC:

ReliefWeb has an appeal call from Church World Services, who is working with the Myanmar Council of Churches to get aid to people affected by the storm. They are looking to raise $50,000 and fast. The details of how you can contribute are on this page.

So a little over eight months into my research and I’m finally wrapping my case studies of domestic non-governmental organizations that do anti-trafficking work in Ukraine. In the coming weeks, my research assistant (yes, that’s right, a research assistant. I feel so legitimate) and I will head off to Chernivtsi and Mykolaiv to meet with the last two organizations we will be studying. So far we have gone to organizations in Ternopil, Simferopol, Vinnytsia, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zhytomir, Pavlohrad, and Odesa. It’s been an unending blur of planes, trains, marshrutkas, squatter toilets, strangely suspicious hotel lobby employees, and Cheletano pizza. The task of taking down fourteen to twenty pages worth of notes and retyping them has been daunting, but extremely rewarding.

The purpose of these case studies is to take an in-depth look at the structure of these organizations, their mission and activities, their financial operations, their external relations with the government, community, other NGOs, etc., as well as taking some time to ask questions that require self-assessment and reflection on the part of the directors of these organizations. They are connected because they all provide direct services to victims of human trafficking in Ukraine and are IOM partner organizations (one of the groups I work the closest with). We tried to select based on geographical representation, as well. All of this will culminate in a best and sustainable practices manual as well as a possible training seminar for NGOs to be put together in June.

Most of these organizations branch out into other areas- HIV/AIDS, street children, immigration assistance/consultation, domestic violence, drug use, etc. Some do it because there is more funding that way, some do it because they feel the topics are inextricably related, and some both.

Another common thread thus far is a complete dependence on international donors. And at least some of these organizations are considered very strong and stable as far as the work they do, the transparency of their operations, and the way they run their show meaning that it is unlikely we will see a different trend elsewhere. The problem is, once the international donors lose interest, the organizations will either be forced to find funding some other way by going into different areas of work or will have to close-up shop.

In my time at these organizations, I’ve also been able to get invaluable interviews with the State Border Guard Service, the State Security Service (SBU- the hand down of the KGB), the Ministry of Family, Youth, and Sports, the Ministry of Interior, as well as lawyers and social workers that take time to work with these organizations and victims.

But it’s not all work and no play. In Simferopol, for example, the director of the organization we studied, who is a real firebrand and human rights defender both in her organization and as a practicing lawyer, decided to bring us out after the study was finished into the countryside of the Crimea to meet a Crimean artist and friend of hers. His name is Aleksander Khmailo and his work is absolutely fascinating. He lives in a small village in the Bakhchesarai region and his studio was a very small room connected to his house, which stored most of his work. He has sold very few pieces (because he does not sell them) and puts them on exhibit rather infrequently. Some of his work he claims to be prophetic: he sees the images in his dreams and paints tragedies that do not happen until years after he has finished the piece.

Believe it or not, he painted a piece during the 90s which depicted 9/11. It was of a woman, on her knees with her head down and an American flag draped over her shoulder. In the background to the right is a bright figure of death and to the left are two modern buildings upside-down and smoldering. He also painted a piece of an upside-down plane over a woman and a statue with the lion of Lviv just before the tragic plane crash in Lviv that killed over 80 people. Not all of his paintings are like this, of course, but they’re the ones he spent the most time explaining to us. The whole thing was bizarre, but fascinating nonetheless and the art was quite amazing. Below are a couple pictures I took while we were talking to him.

What else? Well I took my first express trains in Ukraine on a couple of these trips. The trains were really nice, very European. It was probably bought from Poland or the Czech Republic or something. One problem: they still run on Ukrainian tracks. To put it into perspective for my Western New York readers, it was kind of like taking the cars off the Superman at Darien Lake and putting them on the tracks of the Predator. Does the Predator still exist?

One more piece of research news: I will be staying in Ukraine through August to work on the research project on xenophobia and xenophobic violence. I’m quite excited about the project and am looking forward to really starting it. I’ve already taken on some tasks within the DI, participating in presentations to embassies and local schools so I look forward to working on the project (at least mostly) full time.

Tomorrow I leave for Istanbul as, in my mind, I thought it would be the best way to go somewhere I haven’t gone before and restart my 90 day clock to avoid registering with the city. Well, apparently, I’m screwed even if I do leave the country. Ukraine, as part of its WTO commitments is cracking down on foreigners within their visa/registration regime. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about registering once I get back, but I guess I have to figure it out or I’m going to get fined.

At least the weather in Kyiv is finally getting better.

Maidan Nezalezhnosti is known in the West mostly as the scene of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine’s most significant event in it’s independent democratic history. Well, a little over three years later, President Bush has decided to come to Ukraine just days before an important NATO summit in Bucharest where Ukraine’s future in the organization faces its next test. However, instead of the square being filled with a young force of pro-democracy demonstrators, today, part of the square was occupied by members of the Communist and Socialist parties as well as people who had come strictly because they oppose NATO. And let’s not forget all the people in between who really couldn’t care either way, but were offered 10 hryvnias to stand in the square and protest for an hour.

President Bush says he supports a clear path to Ukraine’s eventual membership into NATO. Poland backs Ukraine’s bid as well, however players like Germany and France think Ukraine is not ready to join the alliance particularly without full public support for the move. Some say all of this boils down to Russian pressure and influence, however it does seem that people are still wary about what will be Ukraine’s obligations under NATO membership.

President Bush has cooled down the rhetoric during this trip about NATO members fulfilling obligations to the pact and providing more troops. In fact, he stated he will not be putting pressure on Germany to add more troops to the mission in Afghanistan. This comes a little over a month after Secretary Gates warned that NATO allies were not putting in enough effort or troops.

Three of Ukraine’s leaders- President Yushchenko, Prime Minister Tymoshenko, and Parliament Chairman Arseny Yatsenyuk- issued a joint statement in January with their intentions to seek a Membership Action Plan, which would rapidly speed up the process of membership beyond anything happening now. During two separate meetings I attended earlier on in the course of my fellowship, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor stated that the U.S. was not pushing Ukraine to join NATO, but rather simply letting Ukraine know that the doors were open if they chose to move forward.

Of course, not everyone in Ukraine is salivating at the thought of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Unfortunately, it is difficult find solid, reliable information on how many Ukrainians actually support NATO membership and how many are opposed to it. Everyone writing these articles has an agenda so finding figures online and posting them here won’t give you a good understanding of whether or not the idea is feasible among most Ukrainians. However, this article from the government of Ukraine gives you a basic idea of where public opinion stands at this point. All we know is that NATO membership is not as popular as EU membership, but opposition is growing less as people know more.

As for the protest today, yes, there were thousands of people on Maidan. However, some of them were paid. The pictures available on the articles of major international news agencies are probably the really mild protestors. I ran into a group of them carrying posters of half-Bush, half-Hitler, signs calling him a terrorist and fascist, as well as a big banner across a fence next to Maidan that said “*Expletive deleted* Bush, *Expletive deleted* NATO,” in English nonetheless. I probably shouldn’t show them here either, but I will show some of the other pictures I took with my mobile phone.

As you can see, there really weren’t that many and this was about 14:00. However, I avoided going near them.

The protesters walked right passed my office on Mykhailivska singing Katyusha.

As for tomorrow, I’ll be in Vinnytsia conducting my third case study so I won’t be around for President Bush’s visit. The most I got to see today was his motorcade going to pick him up from the airport followed by his advance security team heading towards the hotel. Tomorrow the streets of Kyiv will be plagued with traffic congested even moreso than usual because they will be closing down certain streets while the President conducts his visit. Not really regretting my absence…

Well I am entering the sixth month of my Fulbright in Ukraine. Technically, I have four left to go, but I submitted an application for an extension of two months for my project so I may be here until the end of August.

The extension project will be related to migration, although not necessarily directly to human trafficking. My proposal is to conduct the necessary interviews and gather research on the rise of xenophobic violence and attitudes in Ukraine in order to produce a single, encompassing document that provides the reader with statistical data as well as the sociological research that has been following the rise of xenophobic attitudes, especially among the youth. I would be working with many of the organizations and actors in the Diversity Initiative, a coalition of the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Amnesty International, the Congress of Nationalities of Ukraine, Youth Human Rights Movement, the East European Development Institute, and the Security Liaison Officers in Embassies in Kyiv. The coalition now has 30 member organizations who are combining resources to identify the problem, come up with possible solutions, and present these findings and solutions to the government.

Their efforts have already yielded some results, including the creation of separate task forces in the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). In fact, just yesterday it was announced that the Ministry of the Interior is initiating creation of an inter-agency working group on fighting xenophobia and racism. Ironically, I couldn’t find the article in English, but for my Ukrainian-reading friends out there, here it is in Ukrainian. Basically, these government offices that have started work or are involved in combating xenophobia and racism will become part of this encompassing interagency group that is supposed to serve as a “mechanism.” Hopefully this will result in some hard steps such as actually prosecuting someone who commits these crimes under Article 161 of the criminal code, which provides for punishment for hate crimes. Despite the rising occurrence of racially-motivated crimes, not one person has been prosecuted under this law, and it is often swept under the rug as “hooliganism.”

That was a huge divergence, but essentially my project would be to combine the available studies and statistics with original research in order to produce a report that will make this information useful as it will be collected in one document. And I would have two months to do it. I should find out towards the middle or end of March whether or not I got it.

As far as my current research, it has been an exciting month. From February 13th to the 15th, the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking held the Vienna Forum at the Austria Center in Vienna, which I was fortunate enough to attend. I completed a seven-part series on the sessions I attended for The Human Trafficking Project- they will be posted over the course of the next week so if you’re curious about the information I was able to obtain while being at the Forum, it’s all there. Here are some pictures from the conference:

This was the last session I attended on Friday on gatehring statistical data about human trafficking, which is one of the biggest challenges of the field for many reason. I actually had to break the post on the session into two parts because there was so much interesting information from the panelists.

This was the reception on the first night of the conference at the Hofburg Palace, which was absolutely beautiful inside, as you can see. About 1,500 people attended this conference and came from many fields and regions.

Ok, one more picture from Vienna and this is mostly for fun. When I was at the airport while I was waiting to return to Kyiv. I was sitting with a colleague of mine of the OSCE in Kyiv, when she looked over and said,

“Elise, you follow Ukrainian politics, right?”
Me- “Yes, of course.” (a snarky comment about Ukrainian politics being the bane of my academic existence for the last two years may not have gone over too well here, so I held it back)
Tetyana- “Look over there”

And so I turned my head, and low and behold, Oleksandr Moroz was standing there with his assistant (well, at least I think she was his assistant). Now most of you probably have about zero interest in this guy, but Moroz was the once popular head of the Socialist Party here in Ukraine (different from the Communist Party). He provided some key support to Yushchenko during the Orange Revolution, but then after a fallout and a controversial deal with the Regions Party after the 2006 elections brought him to become Speaker of the Rada that year, he lost a lot of influence. In fact, his party did not make the 3% threshold in the last elections and so he is no longer in the Rada. But I marched right up to him and in my best teeny-bopper-meeting-Justin-Timberlake over-excited bumbling Ukrainian, I asked him for a picture, which he agreed to, probably relishing in feeling famous again. He actually flew coach too, which is either a testament to his socialist principles or to his dwindling bank account.

The following day was the competition for the Telders International Law Moot Court Team that I have been coaching since October. It was held at the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine, which is quite an impressive, modern building not far from my apartment. These students had been working extremely hard on their presentations, and they blew the other teams out of the water when it came to presenting their oral arguments. They were professional, polite, and as the head judge commented to me later, unshakable. Their score was enough to earn the team the prize for Best Oralist for Respondent, but, unfortunately, combined with their score on the written memorial, we fell into second place by just three points. We were really disappointed, but seeing as how this was my first time coaching and this was their first time competing, I think we did alright.

Well, I am supposed to be packing for Vienna, but I got caught up in some headlines and here I am, finally posting to my blog. I had to pick the cobwebs off first, but I think this will work
Yesterday, I headed out to Komarivka to visit the kids again. This time I was greeted by a new little guy I hadn’t seen before. Geoff thinks he may be new to the orphanage. His name is Zhenya, and he has the cutest cheeks I had ever seen and eyes like little saucers. I wish I had a picture of him, but I didn’t have my camera with me. After walking around with me outside, we went into one of the rooms where a bunch of the younger children were watching some cartoon movie about birds going to war. There he sat on my lap, and we watched the movie with the other kids. Natasha and Anya were there. Zhenya tried to share his chewed gum and half-eaten banana with me, but I politely refused and pinched his cheeks.

Geoff and I spent much of the drive there and back discussing developments in the Ukrainian adoption system over the last decade or so. I was able to contribute to the conversation through some of the research I had done at La Strada focusing on child trafficking and exploitation.

First of all, there are three kinds of adoption: domestic- which involves parents and children of the same nationality in the same country; intercountry- which involves the child moving to another country other than the one it resides in regardless of the parent’s nationality; and lastly there is international- which involves parents of a different nationality than the child, who may or may not reside in the same country that the child resides in.

Examples:
Ukrainian child adopted Ukrainian parents living in the U.S.: Intercountry, but not International
Ukrainian child adopted by U.S. parents living in Ukraine: International, but not Intercountry
Ukrainian child adopted by U.S. parents living in the U.S.: International and Intercountry

Perhaps today you saw the article in the NY Times about the families having difficulties bringing children whom they’ve adopted from Vietnam to the U.S. Some families in California that are having a very difficult time bringing back children they have adopted from Vietnam due to restrictions placed on the process by the U.S. government.

Twenty-one entry visas for children have been rejected in the last two years, according to the State Department. More than half the denials have come since last October, prompting complaints that the department is singling out individual cases to embarrass the Vietnamese government into changing its adoption process…

The State Department says it is making sure babies are legitimately available for adoption.

“It would be unforgivable for us to look at a case and think something is wrong, then to let it go,” said Michele T. Bond, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for overseas services. Ms. Bond said Vietnam had never posted a schedule of adoption fees, as required in the bilateral agreement, and said documentation on how some babies came to be orphaned “is unreliable.”

The State Department warning said that embassy personnel had seen “an increase in the number of irregularities appearing in orphan petitions and visa applications,” and “significant increases in the number of abandoned children” in two provinces, including Thai Nguyen, where the three contested babies were adopted.

Now the families have gone through some extreme and expensive measures of ensuring that the babies have not been adopted or abandoned under falsities or coercion including hiring high-priced Vietnamese lawyers and staying in-country for months at a time.

Newsweek printed an article earlier this month on what was going on in the international/intercountry child adoption scene noting that intercountry adoptions have decreased over the last few years, and the article quotes lawyers who blame UNICEF for this fact stating that the agency is placing too much emphasis on trying to find ways of ensuring children stay within their own culture and, where possible, their birth family.

There is no argument over the need for adoptive homes—UNICEF estimates that there are 143 million orphans in the world—or the unprecedented interest among Westerners eager to adopt. And children’s advocates of all stripes agree that when possible, children should be raised by their own families and in their own cultures. But there seems to be a discrepancy over what qualifies as “when possible.”

The other thing that their should not be discrepancy over is the use of adoption for exploitative purposes. This is from a document entitled, “Measures to Counteract Child Trafficking And Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Ukraine.”

In recent years many abuses and illegal acts connected with child adoption have occurred. This form of alternative family care has been turned into a profitable business by traffickers, particularly as adoption has become ‘globalised’, with a rapid increase in intercountry adoptions of children born in countries with less developed legal structures to protect them, who are offered to couples who are unaware or unconcerned with the measures employed to facilitate the adoption.

In some cases, mothers or parents are paid to sell their babies or young children. There are numerous cases of birth certificates or similar documents being forged to show that babies belong to someone other than the birth mother. Child trafficking for illegal adoption is a problem in Ukraine. After the collapse of the USSR, a large number of foreign citizens waiting to adopt children came to Ukraine. At that time, the procedure was very simple: after filling out the forms, a foreign citizen could adopt a child from a regional (oblast) adoption centre. As there was no relevant legislation to regulate this, a large number of minors were thus taken abroad.

Thus, when there were no regulations to monitor the welfare of the child, it left an easy route for traffickers to bring children abroad to be exploited. Now Ukraine has much more strict regulations regarding foreign adoption, and in fact, closed the foreign adoption procedure down all together for some time in the 90s after it was discovered doctors were involved in the criminal sale of newborns from hospitals.

While I can see the frustration of these families, and the fact that they have put forth the effort to try to ensure they are not taking part in parents either knowingly selling their children or unknowingly losing their children, it is also a balancing act that only works if the two countries practice transparent and well-documented procedures for conducting foreign adoptions. The kind of money Western families are willing to pay for foreign adoption may seem like a testament to their love for their child, but they could also be unknowingly contributing to a new kind of trade in children driven by unprecedented profits. Alexandra Yuster of UNICEF hits this point in the Newsweek article-

“We’re concerned with the commercialization of vulnerable children,” says Yuster. “It gives an incentive to intermediaries to look for the kind of children these families most want to adopt.” Some poor mothers are tricked into relinquishing healthy babies, while disabled and older children living in state institutions are left out of the foreign adoption loop because there’s no profit incentive to match them with families. “Adoption is supposed to be about finding homes for children, not finding children for families,” she says.

The only catch here is that some countries, such as Ukraine, actually allow foreigners to adopt children with severe problems earlier. For example, according to Ukrainian adoption legislation, normally a foreigner can only adopt a child once he/she has been “in the system” for more than one year, except in the case that the child has special needs such as HIV, Down’s Syndrome, impairments of brain activity, heart diseases, etc. In fact, it was explained to me that in fact some foreign families are actually shown and must reject two or three children with these problems first before they are shown children in full health.

Now this balancing act tips against the children in another way when children are able to be adopted and there are foreign families who want to adopt them, but rules, regulations, laws, or immigration problems forbid the adoption from occurring and the children end up remaining in state care for extended periods of time. The fact that a foreign company is coming in to replace the heating system so that the children don’t have to walk around inside the orphanage with their coats on is revealing as to what kind of priority and funding the state puts into institutional care for its orphans in Ukraine.

On the other hand, most of these children at Komarivka have families. They are called “social orphans”. Some of them even go home during the holidays to spend a day or two with their parents. For whatever reason, either the parents themselves or the state has deemed them unable to care for the children and so the children live in this home. So it is not outlandish to think that children, under better economic circumstances and social support structures, could care for their children themselves, going back to UNICEF’s point.

I realize this post hardly settles the issue, and I feel a bit biased in one direction because I have now had the chance to see how these children live under state care, and how many of them end up stuck in orphanages for extended periods of time with no one to look out for them once they are 18 and out on their own. And how much they love to just walk around holding hands or sit against me while we watch a movie- it’s a starvation for affection like I have never seen. At the same time, I am pulled in the other direction by my research, which has shown that the commercialization and profit margin of criminal activity mixed with foreign adoption is driving a trade in children, and families are either losing their children under coercive circumstances or giving up their children at the thought of gaining money from this increasingly lucrative process.