For several weeks, Canadian media have been reporting on the story of a Canadian family of Lebanese origin who completed the adoption of a young girl in Lebanon but were unable to bring her to Canada after the Canadian government refused to issue documents allowing the child to travel as an adopted child.
While one member of the family remained in Canada, the woman was compelled to stay in Lebanon with the child for many months, waiting for a legal solution that would allow them to travel. The case has since developed into a political and media debate about the responsibility of Canadian authorities, administrative procedures, and the bureaucracy for preventing the family from being reunited.
The case sheds light on a profound structural dilemma within intercountry adoption, one that cannot be reduced to differences between child protection systems or to assigning responsibility to a particular family. According to the family, they completed the adoption procedures before the Lebanese courts, and a judicial decision recognizing the adoption was issued after the required legal steps were completed. Yet the child was unable to join her family in Canada because the adoption was not recognized through the mechanisms required by Canadian authorities. This created a legal and humanitarian limbo: one country recognizes the adoption, while the other is unable to give it effect.
Behind this painful human story, however, lie questions far more complex than those posed by a delayed visa or a disagreement between two countries. How can an intercountry adoption be completed in the country of origin when the child is not legally eligible to enter the country where the adoptive family resides? More importantly, were the best interests of the child truly the guiding principle behind every decision that was made?
This case is not about judging the couple who decided to adopt from Lebanon, nor does it justify questioning their desire to provide a family to a child in need of one. Nor can responsibility simply be placed on one party. Rather, the case exposes a deeper problem within the intercountry adoption system, where the imperative to protect children from trafficking and exploitation may intersect with their right to live within a stable family. In contrast, legal systems do not always succeed in balancing these two objectives.
Perhaps the most painful paradox is that the only person who played no role whatsoever in the decisions that were made is the child herself, yet she is the one bearing their consequences. While legal systems debate jurisdictions and procedures, she remains caught between two countries, two systems, and two different understandings of what the “best interests of the child” actually mean.
To understand this case, it must be situated within the broader history of intercountry adoption in Lebanon. From the late nineteenth century onward, children began to be transferred from Lebanon to Western countries through missionary, religious, and charitable institutions. Intercountry adoption in its contemporary form, however, accelerated particularly from the 1970s onward, during the Lebanese Civil War and its aftermath, amid weakened state institutions, the expanding role of private organizations, and the absence of a unified national framework to regulate intercountry adoption and ensure coordination with receiving countries.
Over the decades, intercountry adoption was never simply a story of finding families for children. It was also part of a far more complicated history in which poverty, war, the social stigma surrounding motherhood outside marriage, and inequalities between countries intersected with institutional and economic interests. These conditions left some children vulnerable to trafficking, falsification of records, or unlawful separation from their families. Decades later, testimonies from Lebanese adoptees have revealed that some were not orphans at all. Some had families who were never given a meaningful opportunity to raise their children, or who were not provided with the full information necessary to make a free and informed decision.
Alongside these critical reassessments, the global intercountry adoption system has undergone a fundamental shift. The focus has increasingly moved away from facilitating the placement of children with families toward safeguarding children’s right not to be separated from their families or communities unless such separation is necessary and all possible alternatives to support the family of origin, extended-family care, or care within the local community have been exhausted.
Intercountry adoption has consequently come to be understood as a measure of last resort rather than a first option, governed by strict safeguards intended to protect children’s rights and prevent trafficking or the exploitation of family vulnerability.
This shift has influenced the policies of receiving countries, including Canada and, in particular, the province of Quebec. Quebec requires prospective adoptive parents to obtain prior authorization from the competent authorities before initiating adoption procedures in the child’s country of origin. The process must also take place within a legal framework that provides the safeguards necessary for recognition of the adoption and completion of the child’s immigration procedures. Because Lebanon is not a party to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and does not have a central authority regulating such adoptions in accordance with international standards, adoptions from Lebanon to Quebec have become extremely rare and legally and procedurally complex.
The current case nevertheless demonstrates that the absence of prior coordination between the country of origin and the receiving country does not always prevent adoption proceedings from moving forward in Lebanon. This can result in situations where children find themselves caught between two legal systems, even though their best interests are supposed to be the primary consideration in every decision affecting their lives.
This is not unique to Lebanon. In recent years, the world has witnessed an unprecedented reassessment of the legacy of intercountry adoption. In the Netherlands, independent investigations identified serious irregularities in intercountry adoptions spanning decades, including falsification of documents, corruption, and child trafficking in several countries of origin. These findings led the Dutch government to suspend intercountry adoption. At the same time, several adoptees have continued to turn to the courts, seeking recognition of the state’s responsibility for the violations they experienced.
In South Korea, which for decades was one of the world’s largest countries of origin for intercountry adoption, adult adoptees have transformed their personal experiences into a rights-based movement. Their advocacy pushed the state to open official investigations into past practices, exposing falsified records and, in some cases, violations, and contributing to legislative reforms aimed at restoring the state’s responsibility for child protection and strengthening efforts to keep children within their families and communities whenever possible.
These experiences have transformed the global debate on intercountry adoption. The central question is no longer how to find children for families wishing to adopt, but how to ensure that no child is unnecessarily deprived of their family, community, or identity.
From this perspective, the restrictive approach adopted by some receiving countries, including Canada, cannot be understood separately from this global history. Strict safeguards are not merely administrative obstacles; they are responses to experiences demonstrating that inadequate oversight can lead to serious violations. At the same time, protection cannot be achieved simply by closing borders or suspending adoption from a particular country if the criteria underlying such decisions are not transparent, consistent, and subject to accountability.
From a child rights perspective, the debate should therefore focus neither on the intentions of the adoptive family nor on an exchange of blame between Lebanese and Canadian authorities. It should focus on the child who is bearing the consequences. Once an adoption decision has been issued and a relationship of care, attachment, and belonging has developed with the adoptive family, preserving the continuity of that relationship becomes part of the child’s right to stability, to live within a safe family environment, and to maintain the emotional bonds that have been formed.
At the same time, this right cannot be separated from the child’s right to protection from unlawful or unethical practices that may accompany some intercountry adoptions. This is where the real dilemma lies: the child is not responsible for the decisions adults made, yet she alone is living with their consequences.
There are no easy answers in this case, nor should judgments be made hastily. But it raises two fundamental questions that deserve public discussion.
The first concerns Canadian policy toward Lebanon. If the risks associated with intercountry adoption have been documented in many countries around the world, why does adoption from Lebanon to Canada appear to be practically impossible? At the same time, adoption programs continue with other countries that have also experienced documented abuses. What criteria does Canada use to make this distinction? Is this policy based on a specific assessment of the Lebanese system, or on the absence of bilateral agreements and cooperation mechanisms capable of ensuring child protection and the mutual recognition of adoption procedures?
The second question, perhaps the more urgent one, concerns the process that preceded the adoption decision in Lebanon. If the relevant Lebanese authorities knew, or should have known, that the adoption would not receive the recognition required in Canada and that the child would consequently be unable to enter the country where her adoptive family resides, why were the adoption proceedings allowed to continue in the first place? Should the competent authorities not have ensured, before making a final decision that would fundamentally alter a child’s life, that the family would actually be able to live together?
This case exposes the limitations of treating intercountry adoption as two separate legal processes: one in the country of origin and another in the receiving country. Adoption is not merely a judicial ruling. It is an integrated child protection process that begins before any court decision is issued and should ultimately lead to the child’s stable placement within a family that is both legally and practically able to care for them.
Contemporary child protection philosophy no longer begins with the search for children for families wishing to adopt. It begins by identifying every possible means of supporting the family of origin, preventing unnecessary separation, and strengthening care within the extended family or local community. Intercountry adoption should only be considered as a last resort, when all other alternatives have been exhausted and when it has been established that adoption genuinely serves the child’s best interests.
When adoption is determined to be the appropriate option, protecting the child cannot be limited to ensuring that procedures have been properly followed. Before any final judgment is issued, authorities must also establish that the family will be able to live together and that legal recognition, immigration procedures, and safeguards regarding residency and citizenship have been secured. The best interests of the child are not fulfilled simply because an adoption order has been issued. They are fulfilled when that decision is viable in practice and genuinely ensures the child’s stability within their new family, rather than leaving them stranded between two legal systems.
The real tragedy in this case is not only that two legal systems have failed to align. It is that the only person with no power over the decisions made in her name is the child herself. While everyone else debates legal and administrative responsibilities, she remains the one bearing the consequences.
Time cannot be turned back. The relationship that has developed between the child and her adoptive family cannot simply be disregarded. At the same time, the fundamental questions this case raises about the integrity and functioning of the intercountry adoption system cannot be ignored.
Perhaps the most important lesson from this case is that protecting children requires us to examine how adoption procedures are actually completed in Lebanon: Who made the decision, and on what basis? Were all safeguards and cross-border implications properly considered? And would it have been more appropriate to first explore family-based and local solutions, in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity reflected in the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, before turning to intercountry adoption?
