The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption is an international treaty that standardizes adoption practices in the countries that sign it. Georgia acceded to the Convention on April 9, 1991 and the Convention entered into force for Georgia on August 1, 1999. The U.S. acceded to the Convention on December 12, 2007 and it entered into force on April 1, 2008.
Adoptive Families Magazine has an excellent article on what the treaty means for adopting parents, children, and service providers. For news and information visit the Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS) site. The site Adoption.com contains the full text of the treaty. The Council on Accreditation site also has current updates on the treaty.
Ethica is a nonprofit corporation that seeks to be an impartial voice for ethical adoption practices worldwide. Ethica has received reports that some adoption service providers are telling families that agencies working in Georgia do not have to be accredited under Hague guidelines. The U.S. State Department has confirmed that families applying to adopt from Georgia will need to use a Hague-accredited agency for adoptions commenced after April 1, 2008.
The Convention strengthens protections for children, birthparents, and prospective adoptive parent(s). It strives to provide children with permanent, loving homes by setting out internationally agreed-upon rules and procedures for adoptions between countries that have a treaty relationship under the Convention. It ultimately provides a framework for member-countries to work together to ensure that adoptions take place in the best interests of a child and to prevent the abduction, the sale of, or the traffic in children. The Convention also establishes a Central Authority in each country to ensure that one authoritative source of information and point of contact exists for prospective adoptive parents to receive reliable and accurate information. For these reasons, the Department strongly supports the Principles of the Convention. U.S. Department of State
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