Transnational Illegal Adoption Market

In recent years numerous intercountry adoption scandals emerged where children in intact families were purchased or abducted from their birth parents and subsequently 'laundered' trough the adoption and legal system as an orphan 'and then adoptee'. Child laundering is not a technical regulatory breach or only a peripheral evil toward a greater good, namely the good of saving children from poor countries, rather it is an outright crime. The objective of this research project is to highlight a general co-responsibility of the European receiving countries by demonstrating how their legal and adoption systems encourage and facilitate this serious crime.