Ukraine not afraid of foreign adoptive parents - Pavlenko

KYIV, December 28 /UKRINFORM/. Ukraine is not afraid of the increasing number of foreigners who want to adopt a child, Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Yuriy Pavlenko told a briefing Friday.

"We are in no way afraid of an increasing number of foreign adoptive parents, who would come to Ukraine. Ukrainian legislation has long been built and focused on the development of national adoption. It has long had a number of limitations, but they are not contrary to the interests of the child in relation to international adopters," Pavlenko said in the context of the adoption of the “Dima Yakovlev Law” in the Russian Federation.

He noted that the policy of Ukraine is aimed at stimulating national adopters. The position of the state with regard to the adoption of children (including interstate adoption) is consistent, predictable and clearly based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - to ensure the best interests of the child in all procedures related to adoption.

According to Pavlenko, in 2012 the Ukrainians adopted three times more children than foreigners: about 2,000 against about 700.

As reported, December 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin enacted the law on measures of impact on people involved in violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms, rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation, which, in particular, provides for a ban on adoption of Russian orphans by the Americans. This law, known as the Dima Yakovlev Law (named after the two-year Russian boy who perished in the U.S. because of the negligence or adoptive parents), was adopted in response to the enactment in the U.S. of the so-called Magnitsky Act, which provides for the introduction of visa and economic sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death in prison of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other human rights violations.