In Belgium, 159 child adoptions from abroad took place last year. This is according to figures from the Minister of Justice, Koen Geens, reported by La Dernière Heure in its Thursday edition. This total number has significantly reduced during the course of recent years: the newspaper observes that 159 is three times less than in 2009, when there were 479 of them.
A new trend: in 2017, there were more adoptions of this type in French-speaking Belgium (87) than in Dutch-speaking Belgium (72). The countries of origin which reappear most often are, in descending order, Ethiopia, South Africa, Thailand, Guinea, India, France and Colombia. These seven countries totalled half of all such adoptions in 2017.
The origins of children adopted from abroad have evolved over the course of time. We may observe that adoptions of Chinese, Ethiopian and Congolese children significantly fell last year. Thus, although 136 Chinese children were adopted in 2007 by Belgian families, the number reduced to four in 2017.
Over a period of 10 years, 3,334 children from abroad were adopted in Belgium. Sixteen of these were adopted by same-sex couples.
The Brussels Times
