Ghana explains ban on child adoption

Nana Oye Lithur, Ghana’s Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, said the temporary suspension of child adoption was to protect the interest of the vulnerable.

The suspension was announced on March 24 and is expected to be lifted at the end of the year.

“The moratorium became necessary following the discovery of a worrying trend in the adoption of children which is detrimental to their welfare,” she said.

Nana Lithur said this during a media briefing on Wednesday to explain issues of inter-country adoptions and initiate media advocacy on public awareness creation.

The Ministry, she said, was aware that many interest groups were concerned about the period of the moratorium and the future of child adoptions in Ghana.

However, the Ministry had a responsibility to protect the vulnerable groups, including children, she said.

The temporary ban was, therefore, to enable the Ministry to re-engineer and to review the adoption process in order to guarantee best practices for effective service delivery, said Nana Lithur.

She said the moratorium aimed at streamlining the role of the Department of Social Welfare in the adoption process by developing more transparent and standardised guidelines.

The Minister, however, said during the period of the moratorium, emergency cases would be determined and granted approval for processing at the headquarters of the Department of Social Welfare.

As part of the reforms, Nana Lithur said an Adoption Desk had been created as a central data collection base on foster care and adoptions for the country.

She called on individuals and groups with relevant proposals on the design of an adoption and foster care policy to submit them to the Department of Social Welfare for consideration.

Source: GNA