Adoption in the Dominican Republic is extremely difficult both for Dominicans as well as foreigners. The paperwork and bureaucracy is nearly endless. The new director of the National Children Council (Conani), Kenia Lora that oversees the abortions, wants to change this. Conani is the agency charged with protecting children and adolescents, attempt to reunite families and guarantee the rights of children.
In an interview with Adriano Miguel Tejada, executive editor of Diario Libre, Lora said that she has met with authorities from the Central Electoral Board (JCE) that handles civil registry in the country, in order to reduce the paperwork entailed in birth registrations. “In 2018 adoption requests doubled because we streamlined some of the processes that complicated things in former years,” she told Tejada.
Regarding adoption statistics… The majority of the children adopted are in Greater Santo Domingo, and there are 14 requests for adoption from overseas, especially Spain. Recent figures show 123 adoptions, almost evenly split between boys and girls. Of the 62 boys, 45 were adopted by Dominican families and 17 by foreigners, while the 61 females went to 52 Dominican families and the other 9 went overseas. At least 69 of these children had lived with foster parents, which are called “padres de corazon” in Spanish (parents from the heart).
In its efforts to protect the children, Conani has established seven half-way houses, and has a hotline called Life Line (Línea Vida) where cases involving children in danger can be reported.
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Diario Libre
4 February 2019
