During a round table discussion on the relationship between Russia and the USA in the field of international adoption dealing with the prospects for concluding a bilateral agreement, the chair of the Federation Council, Valentina Petrenko, recalled that since 1996 eighteen children who had been adopted in Russia had died abroad, seventeen in the USA and one in Canada. In her view one of the ways to resolve this problem was by making bilateral agreements. The Russian Federation was working with twenty-five other countries on this subject either on a contractual or informal basis. However, whilst the leading country as regards the number of adoptions was the USA, a bilateral agreement had been concluded only with Italy.

In the course of routine discussions in Washington, the Russian side had made a number of requests to their American colleagues. They included the creation of a central office that would engage with adoption issues and post-adoption supervision; disallowing private adoptions; enabling co-operation on numbers of agencies (69 are working in Russia including 37American); over a period of three years nine had been closed down following inspections by the ministry of education and science, seven of which had been American); applying sanctions to those agencies that do not fulfil their obligations or commit violations; award of an appropriate certificate to those aspiring to adopt following satisfactory completion of socio-psychological training; supervision of the living conditions and upbringing of adopted children and the provision of corresponding reports; and, banning adoption of Russian children by American citizens in the event that they or organisations in the receiving state fail to fulfil their obligations regarding supervision of the upbringing and living conditions experienced by the child. It appears that State Department officials agreed with the requests that had been advanced. The latest information is that they were ready to consult internally on a draft agreement.

Ms Petrenko said that, in 2009, 86,800 children had been placed with Russian families. In 8,900 cases this had been for the purpose of adoption. In the same year, 1,432 children had gone to the USA for this purpose. That was almost half of the total number of all the young Russians who had found a family abroad (3,815 in all).

http://www.asi.org.ru/ASI3%5Crws_asi.nsf/va_WebPages/D2230A0FC8D59709C3257746003FAD74Rus