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The
commission was set up under pressure from increasing numbers of
grown up adopted children who began to research their roots and
often found that their birth documents had been forged or lost,
or that their adoption had been illegal.
It looked at adoptions from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia,
Indonesia and Sri Lanka from 1967 to 1998.
Dutch parents adopted around 40,000 children from 80 countries
in the previous half century. The practice has declined in
recent years, with just 145 children adopted in 2019.
In some of the most difficult cases, children adopted via
intermediaries were found to have been stolen or purchased under
duress from their birth parents.
Rights Minister Sander Dekker said on Monday that despite recent
reforms "too much remains out of our sight" in some foreign
countries.
"I understand that this will be painful for some people, but let
us not forget the reason for this decision: by suspending
adoptions we are protecting children and their biological
parents," he said.
In a letter announcing the halt, Dekker apologised to the
adopted children, adoptive parents and birth parents who were
harmed in varying degrees by the practice.
"The positive sentiment around adoption in the previous century
-- with the leading idea that we were doing good by adoption --
may be an explanation, but it is not a justification," Dekker
said.
He said it would be up to the next government to decide whether
any foreign adoption system could be designed that would not be
vulnerable to such abuses.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government resigned last month over
a tax scandal and is acting in a caretaker capacity until an
election due in March.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Alison Williams)
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