Causecast

By MELISSA JUN ROWLEY, Contributing Writer

Pop icon Madonna left the African country Malawi on Sunday and headed to London, after being denied her request to adopt four-year old Malawian girl Chifundo “Mercy” James.

The singer first met Mercy when she adopted her Malawian son David in 2006. The adoption process was finalized last year. But today, Madonna is facing some strict rules, regarding her desired addition to the family. According to Malawi law, prospective adoptive parents must live in the country for 18 to 24 months while authorities determine whether or not they are fit parents. This stipulation was overlooked three years ago when the star took David to her home in London, where she lived with her then-husband Guy Ritchie and her two other children, Lourdes, 12, and Rocco, 8.

In a ruling Friday, Judge Esme Chombo said Madonna did not meet Malawi’s standard of “resident.” The performer’s lawyer has said Madonna appealed against the judge’s ruling. A court date has not yet been set.

Since news of Madonna’s desire to adopt the Malawian girl, the now-single mother who split from Ritchie last year, has faced tight scrutiny by some child welfare groups, including Save the Children UK.

During a televised interview on CNN’s American Morning, Dominic Nutt, spokesman for Save the Children UK, urged the star to reconsider her adoption of the Malawian girl. Nutt explained that his main concern about adopting so-called orphans is that they usually are in fact not orphans. He said most of the children have at least one parent living – “and even those that don’t, have a wider family that can look after them.”

“We believe that children in poverty should be best looked after by their own people in their own environment,” said Nutt. He argued that people and organizations that want to help children should support them by building schools, versus shipping them off to live “across the world in mansions.”

While wanting children to be knowledgeable and understanding of their roots is a sound principle, wishing for their overall well-being and their chance to having promising futures irrespective of their whereabouts must take precedence. Kinship and knowing one’s history are important factors in an individual’s development. And providing impoverished countries with the tools they need to help themselves should be at the fore of our administration’s international dealings. But at the end of the day, it is imperative to look at the odds abandoned children in poor countries have at leading healthy and prosperous lives.

According to UNICEF, for every 1,000 births in Malawi, 120 children die. The life expectancy in that country is only 44 years old. The majority of children over the age of ten do not attend school.

Educating the children of Malawi would indeed be an effective way to help get the Malawians out of the “cycle of poverty” that Dunn referred to during his CNN interview. By all means, the United States should allocate money and resources to Malawi, as well as other countries that are dwelling in destitution. But embracing one cause does not mean we need to discard another. Investing in the building of schools and hospitals in Malawi does not mean we should not have the right to take in a child in need if we follow the laws of that child’s country. We can do both, as Madonna has successfully done in the past.

In 2006, Madonna and Michael Berg founded Raising Malawi, a nonprofit initiative dedicated to ending the poverty and hardship of Malawi’s orphans. The initiative supports community based organizations that provide children in need with food, shelter, education and medical care.

To learn about the different ways you can get involved with Raising Malawi, visit http://raisingmalawilist.org.
To learn about international adoption, or how you can make a positive contribution to the welfare of children all over the world, visit Holt International. Holt International is just one of many adoption agencies specializing in global adoption.

Photo by David Shankbone, used from Wikimedia Commons