Online baby sellers exacerbate the problem of illegal adoptions
THE Department of Justice (DoJ) has uncovered a “thriving black market” for the illegal adoption of children through social media. A woman and her male companion were caught trying to sell her newborn baby to an online buyer for P90,000. The DoJ said the woman and her partner have since been charged in court for qualified trafficking and child exploitation.
The National Authority for Child Care says it found 20 to 30 Facebook accounts that “broker” the adoption of children, which are actually fronts for child trafficking operations.
Baby smuggling flourishes in the Philippines because there is no dearth of mothers willing to part with their newborn for the right price. Some pregnant women even “pre-sell” the babies in their wombs.
It is a problem rooted in abject poverty. Women living in destitute conditions sell their babies to pay off debts (in 2022, a woman sold her 8-month-old baby to a Nigerian and his Filipino partner to settle online cockfighting debts), or to earn enough money to buy food and other everyday necessities for the rest of the family.
The baby sellers could also be women working in the sex trade who want to cash in on an unwanted pregnancy.
Baby brokers prowl slum communities in search of the infants that best meet the specifications of their clients, who, more likely than not, are foreigners looking to adopt a child without going through the tedious and time-consuming legal process.
Babies of mixed race are said to be preferred and fetched at a higher price.
The transactions are faster and more convenient because the brokers now offer their services on Facebook. It’s almost like ordering from an online shopping app, notes one observer. Prospective clients simply tick off the age, gender and other relevant information about the babies they are looking for.
The underground baby trade goes largely unnoticed, attracting national attention only when actual cases of child trafficking are exposed.
Several years back, an American woman was caught at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport while trying to smuggle a 6-day-old baby out of the Philippines in a bag. The boy’s biological mother had handed him over to the American, saying she wanted him to be adopted.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) says baby trafficking has been existing in the Philippines for at least two decades. The case numbers are on the rise, and the NBI believes social media is a big contributing factor.
Online transactions between the baby seller and buyer are harder to track, and authorities have to wait for the principals to reveal their real identity before they can pounce on them.
In 2022, Facebook claimed it had removed the questionable accounts for violating its human exploitation policy, using “proactive detection technology, human review and reports from our community to find and remove this content as quickly as possible.”
Apparently, some of the accounts managed to escape the purge. Last year, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reported it found at least 12 Facebook groups that sell babies.
According to the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, illegal adoptions “violate multiple child rights norms and principles, including the best interest of the child, the principle of subsidiarity and the prohibition of improper financial gain.”
To curb illegal adoptions, the agency has recommended that UN member-states “strengthen and invest more in effective national child protection systems by increasing support to vulnerable families and providing childcare measures in which adoptions respect” subsidiarity.
It has also proposed the prohibition of private and independent adoptions. Problems related to illegal adoptions have prompted several countries to review their policies on adopting children from other states.
Denmark has even closed down its only adoption agency amid reports of irregularities. It will no longer accept adoptions from six countries, including the Philippines.
Facebook and other social media platforms must do a better job of cracking down on baby-selling accounts. It must also stand by its pledge to “work with law enforcement in situations” where such accounts pose “immediate risk or harm.”