[Continued from HERE.]

If the M Fray is the harbinger of important laws and issues not only being discussed, but positive changes made in the mass of ambiguity and lack of attention to real-life, post-AIDS orphan issues in Malawi, then to me, the M Fray has been worth the drama. As a Malawian professor wrote in response to the M Fray:

Legal child adoption is a foreign concept in Malawi especially because of our extended family system. It is, many times, automatic that orphaned children are “adopted” without legal afterthought. But the truth is there has been strain on many Malawian families as the number of orphans keeps rising, especially in the face of the HIV and Aids pandemic.

The number of orphans in Malawi has reached a heart-wrenching figure of approximately one million—half of them HIV and Aids orphans. In many cases orphaned babies do not survive because of the economic and even emotional strain that clouds adoptive families…

The issue here is that maybe Malawi should revisit the law to help the rest of the world help us. Some things in the law need to be fine-tuned. International adoption is not new, but asking adoptive parents to stay in a country for close to two years for observation is probably a bit too much…Who knows, now that a light has been shed on Malawi’s situation through the recent international media coverage, others might want to follow Mrs. Ritchie’s (Madonna) footsteps?

I hope you take the time to read her whole article. I think she has captured the essence of what, ideally, should come out of the M Fray. International adoption, I believe, is a necessary component in the multi-lateral cocktail of solutions to the AIDS pandemic and its impact, although it is also clear that the laws in Malawi need some improvements.

Many international NGOs (not human rights orientated, but the development/humanitarian actors) have been responding to the M Fray by saying that adoption, “saving” Africa one child at a time, is essentially a waste of time and [Madonna’s] resources. They are using the Fray platform to call for more funding, claiming that only programs like their own will change things. The problem (but there’s no problem, ahem...) is their programs have, to date, had very little long-term impact, lasting just about long enough to be reported to board members and to be used as anecdotes on websites and in brochures to solicit more funds.

The fact is, NGOs, local and international, human rights, humanitarian and development, are just businesses. I hate to break the news to the world, but one of the reasons why poverty isn’t eradicated, despite hundreds of millions of dollars being invested globally, why all nations are not developed at least to the level where basic needs are met, why a large percentage of the world population is still seen as ‘victims’ rather than self-empowered is that NGO’s and the various UN agencies have no intention of working their way out of a job. The fact that for most governments, including our own, aid isn’t really about need and changing inequities but is rather a political tool used to manipulate the decisions of needy and often greedy governments doesn’t help either.

While there are often plenty of good intentioned people involved, no one wants to loose their job … and the special interest groups, especially religious, that are getting their messages across by creating an indebtedness among impoverished people looking to improve their lives definitely have no intention of losing their (self) righteous platforms. This may sound cynical, but it is an opinion formed from being in the belly of the beast.

Sorry, this is turning into a bit of a rant and this is supposed to be analysis/solution time, but... please indulge me for a bit, because I do think there is another lesson here that the M Fray has unearthed.


[Next blog: My LAST rant ... I swear!]