What is a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity?

by Jim

You probably see it everywhere, from adoption agency literature to posts on various blogs and Internet forums. It is usually a claim by an adoption agency of being "Accredited in Russia," or an admonition to make sure the agency you choose is "accredited." But the official Russian sanction for adoption agencies has not been called accreditation since 2006, and there are now very good reasons to change the old habit and call it something else. This article explores the issue and makes the case for a new name.

A Brief History of Accreditation in Russian Adoptions

In 1989, the Soviet Union joined a multinational treaty called the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This treaty opened the door for international adoption to children being raised in orphanages in what became the Russian Federation two years later, as the Soviet Union collapsed. Throughout the 1990's children were adopted from Russia to foreign families through often informal and widely variable processes. Due to limited regulation, profiteering and fraudulent activity in the area of international adoption from Russia began to take root and grow. By the end of the 1990's, the Russian Government decided to do something about it.

In March of 2000, just months before he became President of Russia, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a governmental decree creating a framework banning unlicensed "middlemen" and requiring foreign adoption agencies working in Russia to hold a license from the Russian federal Ministry of Education (MoE). The purpose of this license was to create a level of accountability between the foreign adoption agencies and the Russian authorities. Originally, the licenses were granted on the model of licensing schools and other public instutions, so they were officially called accreditation by the MoE. Certificates of Accreditation, good for one year, were issued to agencies meeting the requirements. Every year, each foreign adoption agency was required to apply for a new Certificate of Accreditation. That process became widely known throughout the Russian adoption community as re-accreditation. For over five years, this was the model under which foreign adoption agencies seeking official approval operated in Russia.

A Russian Rule Rewrite

The yearly process of reaccreditation was more or less predictable from 2000 through 2004. Beginning in 2005, for a variety of reasons including public outcry over the deaths of more than a dozen Russian adopted children at the hands of their American adoptive parents, the process of re-accreditation came under more stringent scrutiny. Re-accreditations were no longer routine. Many foreign adoption agencies operating in Russia sometimes suffered gaps in accreditation that stretched weeks or months. The Russian authorities came under increasing pressure to tighten regulations over foreign adoption agencies. And then President Putin pushed a new law through the Russian parliament that broke the whole system.

From April 2006, all foreign non-governmental, non-commercial organizations (NGO's) were required to submit to mandatory registration and monitoring by Russian authorities under a new Russian law that has been commonly called the NGO Law. Foreign adoption agencies operating in Russia were included in this group of NGO's, which was also comprised of foreign business associations, humanitarian aid groups, human rights groups, foreign political organizations, and others. The NGO Law specified a new and different application process for NGO's to seek permission to open an office in Russia, so the old rules of foreign adoption agency accreditation were rendered legislatively obsolete.

From the time the NGO Law went into effect until November 2006, about 7 months, there was no process by which foreign adoption agencies could receive official sanction to process adoptions in Russia.

In November 2006, the Russian Government finally established new rules, contained in a Russian-language document called Government Decision No. 654 of November 4, 2006. Although the new rules specify more stringent requirements for foreign adoption agencies, they also removed the one-year expiration of the old accreditation regime. The new rules also did away with the name "accreditation," calling it instead a "Permit for Adoption Activity."

Despite the new name, since most people had come to know official Russian government sanction as accreditation, most people and adoption agencies continued to call the new Russian Permits by the old name. Therefore, many agenies proudly proclaimed that they were "re-accredited" or had received their "accreditation" when the new permits were finally issued beginning in July 2007.

Since everyone knew what accreditation in regards to Russian adoptions meant, there was no problem.

Until 2008.

Enter the Hague Convention

In April 2008, the United States finally ratified a multinational treaty covering international adoptions which it signed over a decade earlier. This treaty, called the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect to Intercountry Adoption, also often called the "Hague Adoption Convention," calls for a central authority in each member country (including the United States) to oversee adoption providers completing adoptions between Hague Adoption Convention member countries. The United States implemented this requirement by establishing an accreditation process for adoption agencies seeking to perform adoptions from Hague Convention member countries to the United States.

Russia is not a full party to the Hague Adoption Convention; therefore adoption agencies processing Russian adoptions to the US are not presently required to hold US accreditation under the Hague Adoption Convention rules. But most adoption agencies with Russian programs also work in Hague Adoption Convention countries. So, what has happened during 2008 is that a large number of US-based international adoption agencies now hold US accreditation for their Hague-governed work, whether or not they also hold a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity in order to process adoptions in Russia.

As you might imagine, this has created significant confusion. New prospective adoptive parents seeking to qualify an agency for a Russian adoption often ask whether the agency is "accredited." What they are really trying to find out is whether the agency has a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity. However, if the agency has US accreditation for the Hague Adoption Convention, the answer from the agency may still be "yes," even if that agency does not actually have a Russian Permit. Many newcomers to Russian adoptions do not know that there is a difference.

This problem also frequently shows up on blog messages and Internet forum posts. People looking for information about an agency are often surprised to find out that an agency they believed to have official Russian government sanction for adoptions in Russia actually does not have a Russian Permit, but does have US accreditation under the Hague Adoption Convention.

NOTE: As of May 2010, the US and Russia are working on a bilateral adoption agreement. This bilateral adoption agreement, while not yet finalized, may require that US pre-adoptive parents use an adoption agency that holds US accreditation under the Hague rules for a Russian adoption. It may also require that the pre-adoptive parents be represented in Russia by an agency holding a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity. Some reports have suggested that only US-based agencies holding US-accreditation under Hague rules may be eligible for a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity under the bilateral agreement. If this is true, it will remove the confusion referenced by this article. There is no fixed timeline for the conclusion or implementation of such an agreement, but official sources have mentioned that they expect it to be done before the end of the year.

Let's Remove the Confusion

You may be asking, as long as an agency has either US accreditation or a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity, what difference does it make?

Plenty.

The Hague Adoption Convention does not yet govern adoptions from Russia to the United States (or from Russia to any other country). Therefore, even though US accreditation does provide some assurance that the US adoption agency is under oversight, only a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity is proof that the foreign adoption agency is fully accountable to the Russian authorities and licensed by the Russian authorities to perform adoptions in Russia.

So, I believe it is time to stop calling the Russian Permits "accreditation."

This won't be easy, because the term is deeply entrenched in the Russian adoption community. But for the sake of removing confusion among vulnerable newcomers, we need to do it. The adoption process is difficult enough without perpetuating terminology confusion when we have the power to change it.

Will you join me in this effort?

How You Can Help

Let's call the Russian license what it now really is: a Russian Permit for Adoption Activity, or Russian Permit for short. If you are concerned that people will not know what that means, then at least call it a "Russian Permit (formerly accreditation)" while people get used to the new name. If you want to explain why the name is being changed, all you need to do is link to this article from your article, web page, blog post, or forum post.

I believe that with enough of us onboard, it won't take long before the new term Russian Permit is widely understood and used.





If you have specific questions or feedback for the author of this article, I would be happy to hear from you. Please send an e-mail to jim (at) russianadoptionhelp.com. You will need to remove the spaces and change the "(at)" part into the appropriate symbol for an e-mail address.





This article was last revised on July 6, 2010

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