Kremlin Plans NGO to Monitor Conditions of Adopted Russians in U.S.

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: January 31, 2013 (Issue # 1744)

MOSCOW – The Kremlin plans to set up a non-governmental organization in the United States to monitor the fate of Russian children adopted by American families, a news report said Thursday.

Existing arrangements for such monitoring laid out in a bilateral treaty that came into force in November will be torn up by Russia's controversial ban on adoptions to the U.S..

Officials have repeatedly claimed that Russian children in the U.S. are subject to abuse that is inadequately punished by U.S. courts.

The Russian Embassy in Washington said that such an NGO would primarily collect information about the conditions in which Russian children in the U.S. are living, Kommersant reported.

The idea has already found support in Moscow and Washington, although there are as yet no details about how it will be financed.

Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said Thursday that an NGO was one of the mechanisms for monitoring Russian children during the negotiations leading up to the doomed U.S.-Russia adoption agreement set to expire at the end of 2013.

"The more councils, organizations, committees and other structures that are concerned with control over the observance of children's rights in the U.S., the better," Astakhov said in comments carried by Interfax.

The so-called "Dima Yakovlev law" banning adoptions to the U.S. was passed by the Duma in December and signed into law by President Vladimir Putin.