Russian Children's Rights Envoy calls Kazakhstan to ban foreign adoption

Russian Children's Rights Envoy Pavel Astakhov believes that countries should ban foreign adoption altogether, Tengrinews.kz reports. “My opinion is that sooner or later foreign adoption will become a thing of the past. Of course, there are difficult moments in the life of every country and every society, we don’t deny that. But unfortunately, adoption have turned into business over the last years. And, unfortunately, we do not know much about most of such children. We are not sure that the life they get is good,” Astakhov said at the meeting with Kazakhstan Justice Minister Berik Imashev in Astana. He stressed that Russia had significantly restricted foreign adoption. “You still practice it (foreign adoption) unlike Russia that has imposed serious restrictions. In particular, we have banned adoption of our children by U.S. citizens. And there are restrictions for European countries that have acknowledged same-sex families, same-sex marriages. I We are not trying to interfere into your affairs and the affairs of your state and your parliament, but we would like to draw your attention to the issue,” he said. Russia has been doing so much for its orphans over the last 5 years that it even created a disproportion, as Russian government now spends $1.5-2 thousand per every child in an orphanage per month, Astakhov continued. “When we calculated how much we are spending per every kid in an orphanage, we understood that we should do more to promote local adoption,” he said. By Renat Tashkinbayev