Blog

Introduction

In October 2025, I was appointed Endowed Professor of Recognition, Dialogue and Redress after Intercountry Adoption – the first chair in the Netherlands specifically dedicated to the long-term consequences of intercountry adoption for adult adoptees. What does this chair do, and why is it relevant? In this blog post, I explain the context in which it was established, how it is positioned, and outline the main research themes that will guide my work over the next five years.

Context of the Chair

In 2021, the Commission ‘Investigating Intercountry Adoptions in the Past’, chaired by Tjibbe Joustra, published a landmark report on intercountry adoptions from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka between 1967 and 1998. The Commission found that serious abuses had occurred on a structural scale, including child abduction, the buying and selling of children, bribery, and falsification of documents. It also concluded that Dutch authorities were aware of these practices, yet failed to intervene.

Although the investigation focused on these five countries and this specific period, the Commission emphasized that irregularities likely also affected adoptions from other countries and after 1998, when the Hague Adoption Convention was ratified by the Netherlands. This is due to the structural weaknesses within the system – such as power imbalances and financial incentives – that are difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate. As a result, all 40,000 intercountry adoptions to the Netherlands may have been affected by abuses.

In response, the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection issued a formal apology, suspended intercountry adoptions, and announced a series of measures to address the legacy and ongoing impact of past practices. One of these was the establishment of INEA, the Dutch Expert Centre on Intercountry Adoption. The Minister also raised the possibility of creating a university chair. This has since materialised in the Special Chair Recognition, Dialogue and Redress after Intercountry Adoption, hosted by the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht.

What is a special chair and do we need one on intercountry adoption?

A special chair is a professorship that is externally funded, for example by a foundation or organisation. It is usually a part-time position (often 0.2 FTE) and typically lasts for five years. This structure allows universities to develop expertise in areas that have so far received limited academic attention but are of clear societal importance. This chair is funded by Fiom/INEA. At the same time, the appointment and all academic responsibilities lie fully with the University of Humanistic Studies. This means that the chair operates under the same standards of academic freedom and integrity as any other professorship. The funding organisation has no influence over the research agenda or publications; its role is limited to making the chair financially possible.

Why do we need a Chair dedicated to the aftermath of intercountry adoption? After all, adoptees have been voicing their needs for years. So why invest in more research instead of direct action? Indeed, adoptees have been highly successful in bringing intercountry adoption onto the political agenda and in pushing for recognition and justice. Without their sustained efforts, many of the issues now under discussion would likely have remained invisible. Yet full recognition is still lacking, dialogue remains difficult, and meaningful repair continues to stall. This is where the added value of a dedicated Chair lies. It brings together lived experience, academic insight, and policy practice, and helps to identify recurring patterns, blind spots, and institutional barriers that continue to stand in the way of meaningful repair.

Positioning and embedding of the Chair

Intercountry adoption is a complex phenomenon shaped by different legal systems, institutional practices, and social and cultural norms across national contexts, while giving rise to deeply personal experiences related to identity, belonging, and loss. For this reason, this phenomenon cannot be understood from a single disciplinary perspective; rather, an interdisciplinary approach is essential to analyse its underlying conditions, long-term consequences, as well as questions of recognition and redress.

Over the past ten years, I have consistently adopted such an interdisciplinary approach in my research on intercountry adoption. Initially, I examined the phenomenon from a socio-legal and criminological perspective, focusing on abuses within the system. In my dissertation, The Transnational Illegal Adoption Market, I analysed the structural factors that encourage and facilitate illegal intercountry adoptions, particularly focussing on the German and Dutch systems. Drawing on human rights law, family law, criminal law, criminology, and anthropology, I explored how institutions, actors, and cultural beliefs interact in ways that can facilitate and sustain abusive practices.

Recently, my research focus has shifted to the aftermath of intercountry adoption and questions of responsibility and redress that arise from it. In 2024, I co-edited the volume Facing the Past with Prof. David Smolin, which specifically addresses these issues. In my own work, I have particularly dealt with the legal obligations of receiving countries toward adoptees. With the Chair on Recognition, Dialogue and Repair, I aim to deepen and broaden this line of inquiry. At the same time, I seek to move beyond a predominantly legal approach by incorporating insights from political philosophy, sociology, and epistemology. After all, questions of recognition and repair cannot be addressed through legal analysis alone; they also involve moral, relational, and societal dimensions.

The Chair is based at the University of Humanistic Studies, whose focus on human dignity and the relationship between citizens and institutions provides a strong foundation for this work. Within the university, my chair will collaborate closely with the Chair on Historical Memory and Transformative Justice which examines how societies respond to and deal with cases of historical injustice. The dynamics they identify in cases such as violence in youth care, abuses in the Catholic Church or the child benefit scandal resonate strongly with those in the aftermath of intercountry adoption, making their insights highly relevant to my work. At the same time, my Chair contributes a distinct and still underexplored case of historical injustice, through which broader questions of recognition and redress can be further developed in dialogue with both theory and practice.

Centring adoptee voices

For this Chair, it is essential that the voices of those for whom it exists – intercountry adoptees in the Netherlands – are placed at the centre. The Chair seeks to do so by making their experiences visible, amplifying their perspectives, and ensuring that their needs shape discussions on recognition and repair. Adoptees frequently report that they are not adequately included in decision-making processes related to intercountry adoption and its aftermath, contributing to a sense of powerlessness and marginalisation. This Chair takes these concerns seriously and therefore actively involves adoptees in its work – not only as research participants, but as knowledge holders whose experiences and perspectives help inform its direction.

To embed this from the outset, two roundtable discussions were organised on 16 and 17 January 2026 with Dutch intercountry adoptees. In addition, individual conversations were held with adoptees who could not or preferred not to participate in the roundtable discussions. The aim of the conversations was to provide an open space for adoptees to share concerns and expectations regarding the chair, as well as to exchange ideas about its values and research priorities. Together, the roundtable discussions and individual conversations generated substantial input essential in determining the direction and mission of the chair, as outlined below.

This participatory starting point reflects the Chair’s broader approach: staying closely connected to lived experiences, creating space for different voices, and developing research in ongoing dialogue with those most directly affected. Engagement with adoptees is therefore not treated simply as data collection, but as a way of building knowledge together. Through continued dialogue and participatory activities, the Chair creates opportunities for diverse adoptee perspectives to inform its work and contribute to policy-relevant insights. Particular effort is made to reach adoptees who are less visible in public debates, including those who form the silent majority.

The Chair’s mission and research themes

Intercountry adoption involves and affects a wide range of stakeholders: in addition to the members of the traditional adoption triad (adoptees, parents, and adopters), this includes adoption agencies, other intermediaries (e.g. social workers), and state authorities in both countries of origin and receiving countries. Engaging with questions of recognition and redress therefore requires taking this broader constellation of actors into account, as well as the roles they have played in intercountry adoption and the ways in which they have contributed to, experienced, or been affected by its harms.

At the same time, the temporary nature of this chair requires making choices and does not allow for equal attention to all stakeholders. While all actors remain relevant and will be considered where appropriate, the chair will primarily focus on the experiences of adult adoptees in the Netherlands and on the role and responsibilities of the Dutch state and its institutions, both historically and in the present. This focus does not imply that the experiences of adoptee’s parents are of lesser importance, nor does it diminish the significance of the roles played by adopters, adoption agencies, or actors in countries of origin. Rather, it reflects a deliberate choice aimed at developing concrete, context-specific responses within the Dutch setting.

Drawing on recent conversations with adoptees, alongside observations of parliamentary debates following the 2021 state apology, the Chair will focus on five main themes: adoptees’ lived experiences and justice needs; dialogue between adoptees and institutions; role and responsibility of the Dutch state; right to identity and access to information; and meaningful recognition and repair. It is important to emphasise, however, that this research agenda is not a fixed endpoint, but an evolving programme. As additional funding might become available, new research themes may be taken up and approaches may be adapted in response to empirical findings and ongoing engagement with adoptees.

1. Adoptees’ lived experiences and justice needs

Intercountry adoptees constitute a highly diverse group, with varying adoption histories, lived experiences, and justice needs. This diversity was also evident in my conversations with adoptees. Individuals were adopted from a wide range of countries, under different circumstances, and across distinct historical periods. Some have reconnected with their family members, while others have spent years searching for information about their origins without success. Others have only recently developed an interest in their past and have not (yet) begun this process. Some adoptees engage actively in public debates- often through advocacy organisations – to influence policy on intercountry adoption and its aftermath.

At the same time, there is a large group of adoptees who remain largely silent and do not participate in public debates. This group likely constitutes the majority of the approximately 40.000 Dutch intercountry adoptees. Very little is known about how these individuals relate to their adoption histories or about their needs and expectations. Their absence raises important questions about representativeness, as policy debates tend to be shaped primarily by those adoptees who are most visible, organised, or vocal. Silence, however, does not necessarily mean indifference or well-being; it may also reflect disengagement, fatigue, feelings of exclusion, or a lack of accessible platforms for participation.

This constellation of heterogeneity and silence constitutes a central challenge for recognition, dialogue, and redress after intercountry adoption. Policy processes tend to rely on coherent narratives and clearly defined positions, whereas adoptees’ lived realities are often complex, evolving and ambivalent, which translates into different justice needs and expectations. Without a systematic understanding of this diversity, there is a risk that recognition and redress efforts are shaped by a limited set of voices and simplified categories, leaving many lived experiences and justice needs insufficiently acknowledged.

In the first year of the Chair, I will therefore focus on establishing an empirical foundation by systematically exploring the range of adoptee experiences, needs, and justice expectations. The aim is to better understand how adoptees have experienced their adoption and its aftermath, and what they seek in terms of recognition and redress. Particular attention will be paid to ambivalence, change over time, and patterns of disengagement or silence. The aim is not to assess, prioritise, or judge different perspectives, but to make them visible in their plurality and complexity. By engaging with adoptees across the full spectrum of experiences, this phase will lay the groundwork for subsequent research on recognition practices, dialogue design, and redress mechanisms, ensuring that these are informed by the diversity of adoptee realities.

2. Dialogue between adoptees and institutions

The apology offered to intercountry adoptees in 2021 marked a historic moment, making the Netherlands the first receiving country to formally acknowledge harm and wrongdoing in intercountry adoption. Yet, for many adoptees, this apology has not translated into meaningful redress. Despite years of articulating concrete needs, many feel that their voices have not been meaningfully reflected in policy. Multiple consultations were organised by the Ministry and Fiom/INEA, including roundtable discussions and working groups, in which adoptees were invited to share their expectations regarding recognition and repair. However, many report a persistent gap between participation and impact: their contributions often fail to resonate with policymakers and are only weakly reflected in subsequent policy measures.

A central aim of this chair is to scrutinise the dialogue between adoptees and adoption stakeholders and to understand why it so often breaks down – not only as a problem of (mis)communication, but also as a relational process shaped by institutional logics, power asymmetries, normative values and emotional dynamics. It examines how adoptees’ experiences and needs are interpreted, reframed, or filtered out as they move through policy processes. Particular attention is paid to how emotional expressions – such as anger, grief, or frustration – are received and managed within institutional settings. By making these relational and interpretive dynamics visible, the Chair seeks to clarify why adoptee input so often fails to translate into meaningful policy outcomes, and to provide a basis for developing more responsive forms of engagement.

3. Role and responsibility of the Duch state

The state has acknowledged moral responsibility via its apology, yet seeks to limit the extent of its accountability for its role in past intercountry adoptions. By 2022, the government had spent approximately €600.000 on legal fees in response to tort claims brought by adoptees. In political and legal arenas, the state often presents itself as having acted with benevolent intentions and in accordance with the norms of the time. It also emphasises that it cannot be held responsible for everything that went wrong, pointing to the role that authorities in sending countries, adoption agencies, and, in some cases even adopters played in irregular intercountry adoptions.

Indeed, intercountry adoptions took place in a wide range of scenarios (agency and private), involving multiple actors in both sending countries (state authorities and private intermediaries) and receiving countries (adopters, adoption agencies, and public authorities). The large-scale harms associated with intercountry adoption did not result from the conduct of a single perpetrator, but rather emerged from interconnected networks of institutions, policies, and practices operating across borders. This raises a fundamental question: to what extent does a receiving state, such as the Netherlands, bear responsibility for harms produced within transnational systems of governance in which authority, knowledge, and control are fragmented across multiple actors?

This question requires clarification, because as long as responsibility remains ambiguous, recognition and redress risk becoming matters of political discretion rather than obligations grounded in accountability. In such a context, repair depends on voluntary commitments rather than duties that are morally grounded.

To address this question, the Chair adopts a relational perspective on responsibility. Rather than locating responsibility solely in the actions of individual actors, this approach understands responsibility as emerging from the relationships and interactions that connect actors within a broader transnational system. This includes the legal frameworks, institutional practices, and prevailing norms that shaped their conduct. A relational perspective thus makes it possible to account for the ways in which the Dutch state may have been implicated in these processes – through its involvement, facilitation, and responses to known risks – while also capturing forms of shared and distributed responsibility that cannot be adequately understood through a purely actor-centred lens.

4. Right to identity and access to information

Adoptees frequently invoke human rights when articulating their justice claims, in particular the right to identity. This right is recognised in international human rights law, most notably in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, its precise scope in the context of intercountry adoption remains insufficiently clarified. In particular, it is unclear under which conditions this right may have been violated at the time of adoption, and what obligations it generates for states today.

Two distinct moments can be identified in which the right to identity may be engaged in relation to a receiving state such as the Netherlands. The first concerns the adoption process itself. The key question here is whether receiving states did enough to prevent abuses, especially in situations where risks and irregularities were already known. Given that many of these abuses occurred in sending countries, the attribution of responsibility to the Dutch state is not straightforward. This raises complex questions about the scope of the state’s obligations at the time, including its duties of oversight, due diligence, and intervention within a transnational adoption system.

The second moment concerns the present: Many adoptees continue to face significant obstacles in accessing information about their origins or reconstructing their identities. Although the underlying harms may have occurred decades ago, their consequences persist. This shifts the focus from past conduct to current obligations: what must the state do today to ensure that adoptees can effectively access reliable information and meaningfully exercise their right to identity? More generally, which duties of repair, restitution, or other forms of redress arise for the state in response to violations of this right?

Particular attention is given to the organisation of archival systems and access to adoption-related records in the Netherlands. For many adoptees, such records are indispensable to reconstructing their personal histories and identities, yet access to this information is often experienced as fragmented, incomplete, or unduly restricted. From this perspective, archives are not merely repositories of information, but key infrastructures through which the right to identity is mediated in practice. How such systems are organised – what is preserved, how it is classified, and under what conditions it is made accessible – profoundly shapes the extent to which adoptees are able to know their origins. Archives thus emerge as critical sites where human rights obligations take concrete form, and where they may equally be realised or undermined.

5. Meaningful recognition and repair

What do intercountry adoptees need in order to feel recognised, and for harm they experience to be meaningfully repaired? Based on what adoptees have shared about their experiences, needs, and expectations, this Chair aims to turn these insights into concrete proposals for recognition and redress. At the same time, it looks beyond individual measures and asks a broader question: what in the system allowed this harm to happen in the first place? Addressing past injustice is not only about looking back. It also means asking what needs to change today – in laws, in professional practices, and in how institutions think and act – so that similar harm is not repeated.

Many current approaches to recognition and redress fall short because they are designed and controlled by institutions, rather than shaped by those affected. As a result, participation can feel symbolic, while underlying power imbalances remain. This Chair therefore explores how these structures can be changed. The aim is to support responses that not only acknowledge past harm, but also improve how institutions listen, respond, and take responsibility. In the end, the goal is to contribute to responses that take past harm seriously and help prevent it from happening again. This is especially important as new forms of cross-border family-making, such as international surrogacy, raise similar questions.