ADA News (English)

After the registration of the in process adoptions before the CNA and after a month and a half refusing to accept old or new files, the PGN had no other choice but to accept them, provided they come with the copy of the registration form, duly numbered, signed and stamped by the Consejo Nacional de Adopciones. Since many cases were rejected during November and December, for previos based on lack of documents that very often were already in the file, the PGN is facing a huge workload, but no additional investigation or constancies from the CNA are being requested.

Meanwhile, the Consejo Nacional de Adopciones does not look like it will take off any time soon. According to what Marilys Barrientos de Estrada told me, the CNA is temporarily at the library of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, in zone ten, waiting for the ten million quetzals to be given to the CNA. Until that happens, they do not plan to do any work. When she was asked about the situation of the children, she said that they will not open orphanages, that only those who are registered will be able to keep housing children. When she was told that the private hogars will have to close, because they too, need money to work, she said that it will be the Bienestar Social hogars the ones who will house the children. The little detail that Bienestar Social does not have hogars for babies, escapes her. One thing is certain: the children who do not have a family, are suffering. The situation for them is worsening and there is very little we can do, because the hogars are watching the pennies, since nobody knows how long the siege will last.

On February 29th, we filed a Constitutional challenge against the part of article 67 of the Adoptions Law that eliminated the articles 28,29,30,31,32 and 33 of the Law 54-77 that established the notarial process of adoptions, based on different articles of the Constitution that establish the protection to the right to work as a professional, when one has a degree issued by the universities of the country. The constitutional protection to perform professional duties cannot be eliminated by a lower law, because such law would be null and void. We have no doubts that the Constitutional Court will uphold the challenge and that the notarial process will be restored. Not to do so, would go against everything the Constitutional Court stands for. The lawyers have never refused to be under the supervision of the PGN and certainly will not reject the supervision of the CNA, but we are not willing to see that our professional practice is eliminated, just because someone, in a foreign country, declared the war to lawyers who handle adoptions, knowing very well that only the lawyers have succeeded in providing permanent loving homes to the children who do not have them. Six months had the PGN as Central Authority in 2003, to do something to prove that they could come up with a better system. They did nothing. Aside from the registration of the in-process cases, the CNA has not done anything in two months. Children keep being born, and there are no provisions for them. The Courts of Minors do not know where to send the children left at the hospitals and in public places. Two months after the Adoptions Law took effect; its lethal effects are being felt by the children who are supposedly, those who were being protected by such law.

The Constitutional Court admitted the challenge, but still has to rule about the preliminary suspension of the article of the Adoptions Law that was challenged.

There are other legal matters that are better paid than adoptions. Criminal law is one of them. A criminal lawyer makes in one morning what an adoption lawyer makes after many months and sometimes a year of trying to overcome the resistance of every bureaucrat who thinks that his job is to make it as difficult as possible, that children find loving and permanent homes, in the shortest possible time. To justify their job, they come up with all kind of reasons, all of them in the name of the protection of the rights of the children. The Adoptions Law leaves all the process in their hands, and in the absence of a lawyer working to get a home to the child, the processes will take for as long as the bureaucrats want. They already have said that the adoptions now will take two or three years, but that they will be transparent. A legal process can be short and transparent. Length and legal do not go together.

The PGN keeps working in their usual slow pace, with rumors of the Attorney General being kicked out, which is very likely, since there are many things that he has to explain about his very mediocre performance as Attorney General. The new AG will appoint the lawyer who will substitute Barrios. Even though with the Adoptions Law, the PGN has nothing to do with the adoptions, when the notarial process is restored, the PGN will be again, the entity who oversees the legality of the adoptions done before a notary. The lawyers do not oppose State oversight. What we oppose is that laws are being passed just to please the international community, that faceless ghost that has the power to manipulate Congresses in poor countries like Guatemala, without caring that the lives of may children will be negatively affected by such legislation. That is why we challenge it. Because it is the fair thing to do.