About 60 children are adopted from Nepal to the United States and Europe each year. Adoption laws were tightened in 2010 amid international pressure. But there is evidence that children continue to be illegally smuggled into the West.
Action for Child Rights is a Belgian organization led by Jurgen Conings that addresses the widespread abuse in orphanages across Nepal. Their main focus is to stop the emergence of paper orphans; children who are labeled as orphans and put on the adoption market when they actually have biological parents.
The Nepalese system allows you to adopt a child quickly. The paperwork required to create an orphan is very simple. They took a picture of the child and it was published in a Nepalese newspaper. If no one answers, you can formally apply for a dissertation. It’s called a system, but it’s often misused in practice.
Arjun is a paper orphan. Six years ago, he was adopted by an American couple from the Krishna Balmandir Orphanage in Nepal. Jurgen was contacted by his biological mother, Khanchi – she had no idea what had happened to her son. So Jürgen started looking for Arjun’s adoptive parents
