End the black market in child adoption

Most countries have some legal mechanism for determining who may raise another person’s child. Bangladesh, however, has a legal vacuum in this area, with no civil statute clearly governing adoption. This coupled with the fact that many childless couples look for alternative options through unsupervised digital platforms have helped create fertile ground for a black market in children. A recent report by Prothom Alo found 39 such public groups on Facebook and scrutinised 288 posts. However, the child trade extends well beyond social media. A woman broker admitted that she and her associates find pregnant women in hospitals who do not want to keep their babies, and then have a network look after them until they give birth. A newborn boy costs Tk 300,000; a girl Tk 200,000.

Not every seller is a seller. Some mothers are desperate, abandoned by husbands and unable to feed another mouth. Some are members of scam rings. One man from Kushtia, for example, lost Tk 10,000 to a "mother" who showed him a baby on a video call, took his advance by mobile money, and vanished along with her group. Law enforcement currently remains too lax to stop such scams and irregularities. In Bangladesh, the penal code punishes selling or buying a child for immoral or illegal purposes. The new law on human trafficking counts adoption in bad faith as exploitation. Yet police say they have received no complaint specifically about child-selling. Nobody complains, of course, when the buyer and the seller are willing parties. Nobody tracks where these children end up: in loving homes, in domestic servitude, or in worse places.

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Meta, which owns Facebook, cannot be let off the hook for the digital scams underway. Its own rules forbid content that facilitates the sale of children or illegal adoption, yet the groups Prothom Alo found are public and searchable. Meta profits from the attention that such groups attract. Bangladesh's regulators should therefore demand that Meta remove the groups, act on report findings promptly, and cooperate with investigations. At the same time, law enforcement agencies must crack down on the black market where the price of a child is set by just a few clicks and a mobile-money transfer. The government must bring the whole situation under control, making sure that the criminals, once targeted, do not simply retreat into encrypted apps to continue the trade through another platform.

Bangladesh should also consider a civil legal framework for child adoption for people of all faiths, with proper court oversight, screening of adopters, and a national registry that follows each child. Many childless couples badly want a family and they need proper and safe options. The authorities should help open a lawful, supervised route for them. That will shelter many vulnerable children and also shrink the market that now preys on the desperation of people.