Event in Guatemala. Trans-border care for children: the right of children to family-based care through family preservation, national and international adoption.

The Meeting took place in the city Antigua, Guatemala on September 7 and 8. It was an initiative by UNICEF (UNICEF Regional/ UNICEF Guatemala and UNICEF Nicaragua) and the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which jointly organised the event with the support of Guatemala’s Adoption Council and the cooperation of the Swedish International Development Agency.

Activities in Roatan, Honduras.

Representatives of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panamá, Dominican Republic and Cuba and international experts gathered at the event.

There were panels and workshops that tacked the following topics: preservation of the family of origin in the framework of the comprehensive protection system, protection alternatives (mainly foster care), and national and international adoptions.

Matilde Luna was invited as an expert to coordinate the workshop entitled “Protection Alternatives: Foster Care (Substitute Families)”. She made an initial exposition in order to provide a context for the issue and, thanks to, Laura Martínez Mora (HCCH) and Estuardo Sánchez’s (AECI) notes, important conclusions on this subject and its development in the region were obtained, since the different representatives explained their local realities. These conclusions also gather the challenges that the States face, which were registered in the Final Document of the event and represent a commitment to be followed up.

Although the principal axis of the Seminar was the improvement of national and internation adoption systems, the approach of the subsidiarity of the practices and, in particular, the subsidiarity of adoption were considered to be relevant: the stress on subsidiarity is fundamental to support the approach provided by the international instruments.

The need to have good programmes to strengthen the family of origin and foster care programmes that prevent the risk of institutionalisation is being incorporated in the legal frameworks and in the concrete experiences in all the countries of the region. The need to have national responses at all levels of execution of public policies for the protection of rights was highlighted; at this level, foster care becomes relevant since its practice is the result of the local placement of children under the care of families when there is no other option while a definitive solution is being decided.

It becomes evident from the presentations that the development of foster care programmes is uneven. The common challenges for the region are: to strengthen the temporary nature of the foster care measure so as to avoid “not very transparent” practices that lead to adoption; to call and recruit a bigger number of families; to have institutions prepared to take decisions in time, avoiding unnecessary delays. Costa Rica stands out in the organisation of programmes. Cuba states its discord, since its development of community- and family-based care is part of the socialist policy.