Almost 75 per cent of the 914 children adopted into Ireland from Vietnam over the past three decades were female, a new report reveals.
The latest research published by the Adoption Authority of Ireland on intercountry adoption notes that the majority of Vietnamese adoptees in Ireland are now in their teens.
The largest number of intercountry adoptions into Ireland over the 1988-2020 period came from Russia (1,629), followed by Vietnam.
Last year there were 21 intercountry adoptions into Ireland, the Adoption Authority notes, with nine of these coming from Vietnam.
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The report, entitled Intercountry Adoption in Ireland: Experiences, Supports, Challenges Country Briefings: Vietnam, states that the average age of Vietnamese children adopted into Ireland prior to the enactment of the Adoption Act in 2010 was seven months. It rose to two years old after the Act was implemented, and there is evidence the average age is increasing further, the report’s authors say.
This is “in keeping with a worldwide trend” regarding adoptions from Vietnam, it says.
The researchers suggest the pattern can be attributed to a range of factors, including legislative changes, recent procedural changes, and the due diligence required of Vietnamese adoption agencies as a result of signing up to the Hague Convention.
International adoptions
The report points to the social context regarding the culture of large-scale international adoptions from Vietnam which “commenced abruptly” in 1975 with “Operation Babylift”. The scheme, partly funded by the American government, involved “rescuing” thousands of Vietnamese children purported to be orphaned or abandoned as a result of the war. The number of adoptions “dipped sharply” in the 1980s, reportedly as a backlash against the operations. However, the figures began to increase again over time.
The first children adopted into Ireland from Vietnam came in the late 1980s. Numbers grew to a peak in 2008, following an overall pattern of increasing intercountry adoptions from the country. Adoptions from Vietnam into Ireland were suspended in 2009 while the southeast Asian country restructured its adoption system.
Families in Cork have adopted the highest number of Vietnamese children of any county in the State, with 214 adoptees settling there. Adoptive parents in Dublin welcomed 205 Vietnamese children.
Meanwhile, domestic adoption within Vietnam has increased significantly in recent years, reducing the number of children eligible for intercountry adoption, according to the report. Findings from the World Health Organisation cited in the report show that Vietnam’s mortality rate for children under the age of five has reduced by 60 per cent since 1990. However, a minority continue to face a number of challenges, with Unicef reporting in 2019 that a fifth of children experience “at least two deprivations in education, health, nutrition, shelter, water and sanitation, or social exclusion”.
