African child adoptions 领养非洲儿童

The number of adoptions from African countries has greatly increased.

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儿童福利机构专家表示近年来非洲国家儿童被领养的数量大幅上升。根据一项最新调查报告，非洲儿童政策论坛说来自美国和世界其他多个国家的领养者来非洲领养儿童的数量在过去八年内上涨了三倍。请听 BBC 记者 Mary Harper 的报道。

The African Child Policy Forum says more than 41,000 African children have been sent overseas for adoption in the past eight years. Most go to the United States, others to Western Europe and Canada. The situation is especially dramatic in Ethiopia which, the report says, now sends more children abroad for adoption than any other country, apart from China.

One reason for the increase in adoption from Africa is that it is more difficult to adopt children from countries in South America and Eastern Europe because many have limited or shut down overseas adoption programmes. As a result, the report says, countries such as the United States have turned en masse to Africa to find children to adopt.

The African Child Policy Forum insists every child has the right to be reared in the country in which it was born, an opinion shared by Mr Bekele of the Abebech Gobena orphanage [in Ethiopia]: "We prefer local adoption to international adoption because the children will not be uprooted from their culture, from their people, and they will not forget their country or their language."