The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has recorded higher number of inter-country adoption in the region after three years of enactment of Republic Act 9523, otherwise known as the “Act Requiring Certification of the DSWD to ‘Declare a Child Legally Available for Adoption Proceedings.’” 

Based form the Master list of Children Legally Declared Available for Adoption of the DSWD-CAR, 23 out of 42 children who were issued with certification were cleared for inter-country adoption. Only 13 were matched to local families while there are still six children who were for local matching.

Alternative Parental Care Section Head Mary Ann G. Buclao said that the trend is depicted not only in the region but also at the national level due to lack of prospective adoptive parents locally.

United States of America, Canada, and Spain have the highest number of adoptive parents recorded in CAR while most European countries were documented at the national level.

Buclao said that the challenge is to develop more number of local adoptive and foster families through intensifying advocacy on erasing the stigma of adoption and strengthening the linkages to partner agencies and stakeholders in the implementation of RA 9523.

RA 9523 was passed in 2009 which changed the process of declaring a child legally available for adoption from judicial to administrative procedure. It transferred the authority of declaring a child legally free for adoption from the Courts to the DSWD, fast tracked the process of making a child legally available for adoption and facilitated the provision of permanent families/homes for abandoned, neglected, surrendered, and orphan children. #DSWD-CAR, SOCIAL MARKETING UNIT, Kaye Ann O. Mapalo