Elvira Loibl defended her PhD in early 2019 for her research on illegal practices in the world of international adoption. “As a criminologist, I know that every transaction has a dark side. I wanted to bring that to light.” André Klip, professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and the Transnational Aspects of Criminal Law, was one of her three supervisors – although she made their work easy. “A lightning-fast PhD that ends in a cum laude: that’s rare”, Klip says.

Like most people, Loibl had a positive image of adoption from distant lands. We tend to think of healthy, happy babies, rescued from a heart-breaking situation and ending up in the loving arms of adoptive parents. But the reality is often different, her research shows. “The problem is that there is high demand, especially for healthy babies, as in that romantic picture we all have. It’s a market for children and the demand exceeds the supply.” 

Harrowing

Her PhD was part of the interdisciplinary research programme ‘Good governance in international child transfer’ at the Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE). Loibl, originally from Austria, focused on international adoption to the Netherlands and Germany. Her supervisor André Klip had a personal interest in the project: many years ago, he adopted two children. “Sometimes the results of Elvira’s research were quite confronting. You know you can’t rule out the possibility of abuse entirely, but I was shocked at how little the adoption system can do to resolve or prevent it.”

Criminal

The practices for obtaining children for adoption are often downright criminal. “Children who aren’t in need of adoption are abducted or purchased”, Loibl explains. “They’re taken from orphanages, where they were placed only temporarily by the biological parents. Or mothers are lied to: after giving birth they’re shown a dead baby, while their healthy child disappears abroad. The illegally acquired children are then ‘laundered’: their birth certificates and other documents required for adoption are forged. And the authorities in the countries concerned do too little to stop these abuses; there’s just too much poverty and corruption.”

“Our children are from South Africa, which in principle has strict rules”, Klip says. “The mother has to give permission immediately after the birth and then reconfirm her decision after 60 days. But this rule is easy to circumvent. The mother disappears and doesn’t show up again, or another woman signs the statement. As for documents: when we and our newly adopted son went to a paediatrician for a medical check-up, the information we’d received turn out to match the reality. But as our doctor said, that’s rare. To give an example: the document might say a child is four, when he’s actually six.”