adoption

Terre des Hommes conducted international adoptions between 1967 and 1998. During this time Terre des Hommes placed more than 2,800 orphans and abandoned children for adoption in Germany. Most of these children came from East and Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America. Adoption work represented only a small part of our diverse activities, but it greatly shaped the public perception of Terre des Hommes .

A review

Hardly any other topic has shaped the identity of Terre des Hommes Germany and the organization's public image for many years as strongly as adoption work. The work for abandoned children played an important role even in Terre des Hommes ' founding days. In June 1967, the first plane carrying war-injured children from Vietnam landed in Germany. The airlift was organized by Terre des Hommes volunteers, and more flights followed. The activists of the time soon realized that an airlift alone was not enough to provide medical care for war-injured children. Many children had lost their parents and relatives. So they began looking for German parents willing to adopt Vietnamese orphans. This marked new territory for Terre des Hommes , as up to that point, hardly anyone in Germany had experience with international adoptions. In 1994, terre des hommes made headlines again with this issue when the organization's general assembly voted to cease its active placement work. By then, around 2,800 children had been placed, mainly 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 adoption have repeatedly provided new impetus for the further development of its work. This includes, for example, a multi-year international campaign against child trafficking, which also critically examined the trafficking of children for adoption. Terre des Hommes also campaigned for the ratification of the Hague Convention, which finally established binding regulations for cooperation between states on international adoptions in 1993.

Brochure "We are looking for parents for children"

The brochure “We are looking for parents for our children” offers detailed documentation and analysis of the adoption work of Terre des Hommes , which ended in 1994.

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