Photo is of Ternopil's main city square. Part 1 is found here.

Now to look at how the Ukrainian legislature, Verkhovna Rada , views adoption and the protection of children.

1996 was the year that a new adoption law was passed. Adoption was centralized at the federal level with the National Adoption Center (NAC). The NAC was replaced with the SDA in April 2006.

1996


While some in Ukraine's Parliament have called for the issue of the 54 orphans brought to the United States in January 1992 to be revisited, Chicago Consul General Viktor Kyryk considers the case formally closed.

The Ukrainian government has not given specific approval for the adoption of the Ternopil orphans, but it also has not requested that the orphans return for adoption proceedings in Ukraine.

............

According to Ms. Lawrence, the Ternopil orphans' situation was complicated by their entry to the United States on tourist visas. "Non-immigrant visas are not the way to adopt a foreign child. Children adopted in a foreign country or brought over for adoption in the United States should enter on an immigrant visa."

From: 1996 - FOLLOW-UP: How Ukraine's adoption law affects American families

1996

"We wrote this [new adoption] law first and foremost in the interests of our children," said Nina Karpachova, deputy chair of the Parliament's Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and International Relations, whose working group spent close to a year fine-tuning the adoption law before presenting it for approval in Ukraine's Supreme Council. "The orphans are wards of the state. Where can they turn if not to the state for protection?" she added.

..............

She also said the cases of the Ternopil children who now live in Chicago also would be re-examined. This time, "however, they will not be reviewed as a list of names. Each case will be reviewed individually, because now four years have passed, and I'm sure many have found their fate - happiness in a family circle," said the lawmaker.

"But, I think the organizers of this trip in 1992 should be held criminally accountable," she [Ms. Karpachova] added. "Every child has the right to embrace a family. This is critical. And our parliamentary Committee on Human Rights regards the protection of the rights of a child to be of the utmost importance," she concluded.

From: Parliament cancels moratorium on adoptions, sets procedures

Now let's take a peek how pre-selection, adoption, the sex trade and harvesting organs are intertwined in the Ukrainian mind. In 1998, Ukraine passed its first law against human trafficking.

1998

I should like to draw your attention to the fact that, for the first time in Ukrainian legislature, the concept of "trade in people" as been defined. The Criminal Code states that both open and secret possession of a person connected with or without his/her legal or illegal movement across the border of Ukraine, with or without his/her consent, for further sale or other transaction (with the purpose of sexual abuse, misuse in pornographic business, involvement in criminal activity, adoption of children with the purpose of commerce, use in military conflicts as well as exploitation of his or her labour) entails criminal liability.

.....

Paragraphs 1 and 2 of this law deal with actions leading to serious and severe consequences or actions performed by an organised group connected with illegal trafficking in children abroad or failure to return them to Ukraine (one cannot but recollect the case of 56 children transported from Ternopil to Chicago in 1992 and left there). The concluding paragraph of the law establishes criminal liability for trafficking in children or failure to return them to Ukraine with the purpose of acquiring organs or tissues for transplantation or for forcible donor contribution.

From: 1998 - Action against taffic in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation

Image credit