Terre des Hommes carried out international adoptions between 1967 and 1998. During this time, Terre des Hommes conveyed more than 2,800 orphans and abandoned children for adoption to Germany. Most of these children came from East and Southeast Asia and Latin America. Adoption brokerage work only made up a small part of our diverse activities, but shaped the public perception of Terre des Hommes very strongly.
A review
Hardly any other topic has shaped the identity of Terre des Hommes Germany and the image of the association in public for many years as much as adoption work. The work for abandoned children already played an important role in the founding time of Terre des Hommes. In June 1967, an aircraft with war injured children from Vietnam landed in Germany for the first time. The air bridge had organized volunteers of the Hommes employees. More flights followed. The activists of that time soon realized that an air bridge was not enough for the medical care of war -infringed children alone. Many children had lost their parents and relatives. So it began to search for German parents who were ready to adopt Vietnamese orphans. With this, Terre des Hommes entered new territory, because until then hardly anyone had any experience in the Federal Republic. In 1994 Terre des Hommes again made headlines with the topic when the general meeting of the association decided to hire active mediation work. Until then, around 2,800 children had been conveyed primarily from Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as well as Colombia, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Further development of adoption policy
Within Terre des Hommes, critical debates about adoptions have repeatedly given new impulses for the further development of the work. This includes, for example, a multi -year international campaign against child trade, in which the adoption child trade was also critically examined. Terre des Hommes has also been committed to ratification of the Haager Convention, with which the cooperation of countries in foreign adoptions were finally bindingly regulated in 1993.
Brochure "We are looking for parents for children"
The brochure »We are looking for parents for children« offers a detailed documentation and processing of the adoption work by Terre des Hommes, which ended in 1994.
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