« Kristersson must not bury yet another adoption investigation »
On Monday, Anna Singer submitted the Adoption Commission’s final report « Sweden’s international adoption activities – lessons and the way forward » (SOU 2025: 61) to Social Services Minister Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M). Singer has led the Commission, which was appointed in October 2021 to investigate irregularities in the adoption operations and the need for adoption -specific support.
The Adoption Commission notes that the Swedish adoption activities have been characterized by irregularities and systematic legal uncertainty that have not taken into account the best interests of the child. Instead, the business has been guided by maximizing the number of adoptions to Sweden to assist as many involuntarily childless Swedes as possible.
The investigation also concludes that human rights have been violated for both the adopted and their first parents in the countries of origin. This is because of the widespread presence of counterfeit background stories and manipulated identities.
In this context, the question is also whether Kristersson is actually disputed or not up to date
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) Shade rests heavily on the investigation when he was chairman of the Adoption Center in the 00s. It is a fate’s irony that Kristersson is leading the government that now receives Anna Singer’s report and which will decide whether the recommendations should be realized or not. In this context, the question is also whether Kristersson is actually disputed or not relevant, as is the question of who should really decide it.
During Kristersson’s time as chairman 2003–05, the number of adoptions peaked globally due to the globalization that followed at the end of the Cold War, which meant that Russia, the rest of Eastern Europe, Vietnam and not least China were converted into countries of origin.
Kristersson got during his president of the presence about several alarms about human trafficking. Among other things, he was informed that the adoption center’s adoptions from Chile had not been entitled, but he chose to bury this knowledge by appointing an internal investigation that concluded that the Chile adoptions had been conducted correctly.
Furthermore, Kristersson was informed About that the adoptions from China were problematic, but instead of stopping them, he chose to bury that information as well. The adoption center insured the adoptive parents who had already adopted Chinese children, as well as prospective parents who were about to adopt from China, that the adoptions went right.
Kristersson still has More than that on his conscience. On June 1, 2003, almost 22 years before Anna Singer’s report is submitted to his own government, Annika Nilsson submitted her final report « Adoption – at what price? » (SOU 2003: 49) to Göran Persson’s (s) government. It recommended that the adoption center’s system of applying donations should be abolished and that state control over adoption operations should be tightened.
Adoptive parents were expected to pay a donation to thousands of dollars in cash, in addition to the adoption fee, in connection with the retrieving children. The donations were said to be about assistance from the Adoption Center, but ended up in too many cases in corrupt service people’s pockets in the countries of origin and thereby became a driving force for human trafficking.
Adoption Center with Kristersson at the forefront, however, had campaigned so successfully against Annika Nilsson’s investigation ever since it had been appointed in 2001 that none of this got rid of. Nor did it become anything about her proposal to set up a resource center for adoption -specific issues in the light of the soaring suicide rates and the widespread mental illness among the country’s adopted.
Kristersson simply lowered Nilsson’s investigation, including the proposal for a stop on the massive money flow to the corrupt countries and the proposal for a resource center. And now he is forced to decide on a new adoption investigation whose recommendations are in line with Nilsson’s proposal.
Nothing else is now enough other than that Ulf Kristersson, as both Sweden’s prime minister and the former chairman of the adoption center, publicly apologizes
Singer’s report Namely, suggests that the state takes over the full responsibility for the small number of foreign adoptions that still exists to once and for all few stops on the continued occurrence of human trafficking in the adoption activities and to no longer allow private actors as the adoption center to engage in adoption agency. The Adoption Commission further proposes to just establish a national resource center to support the adopted with psychological counseling, roots, travel and DNA tests.
Singer’s current investigation also recommends that the government should apologize to the adopted and their relatives, which both involve the first parents in the countries of origin, the adoptive parents in Sweden and, in the long run, also the children of the adopted – and at the same time admit that the state has violated their human rights.
Nothing else is now enough other than that, as both of Sweden’s prime minister and adoption center, Ulf Kristersson apologizes and recognizes that the Swedish state, like he himself, has been guilty of assisting in human trafficking and to violating the human rights of the adopted.
Kristersson already has lowered an adoption investigation 22 years ago and therefore he just must not bury the current investigation. In addition, the schedules of the History Adoption Commission’s recommendations and deprive the Adoption Center must be able to convey foreign adoptions and instead transfer the responsibility to the state to continue to do so, and set up a national resource center for adoption -specific issues. One must do everything at all in order for society to compensate for decades of neglect of the needs of the adopted.
Read more:
DN Debate. The Government’s investigator: « Sweden should stop international adoptions »
Adopted positive to recognition – hoping for financial compensation
