Skip to content
LPBN-Icon-v1
Human Rights at Home Blog
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Human Rights and International Adoption

By humanrightsathome

Professor Marie Failinger of Hamline Law School recently posted a fascinating new article on the fraught topic of intercountry adoption and human rights.  Published at 39 North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation 523 (2014), the abstract is below.  Additional human rights perspectives on intercountry adoption are available here and here.

Abstract: 

This article articulates rights in existing intercountry adoption conventions as the touchstone for fleshing out substantive human rights expectations in international conventions, centered on the concept of human dignity. It discusses a cluster of meanings that grow out of our recognition of human dignity which are foundational to a just and workable adoption regime across national lines: the realism principle; the global interdependence principle; the family diversity principle; and the vulnerability principle.

The four core principles of the Convention of the Rights of the Child – non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development, and respect for the views of the child – can be re-anchored to the concept of human dignity to inform these concerns about the value and limitations of intercountry adoption.

 ——-

For more ideas on Human Rights at Home, check back later this week for posts by Fran Quigley (“The Kind Advocate”) and Jonathan Todres (Children’s Literature and Human Rights)!