Over the past sixty years, many children born in Latin America, Asia and Africa have been adopted by European couples, sometimes in defiance of the law. In the 1990s, Guatemala was one of the first countries in the number of adopted children in the world. Many of them, wrongly declared to be stillbirths, orphans or abandoned, have been adopted in Western countries, such as France or Belgium. Today, these grown-up children seek to know the truth.
Who are these adopted children? How could such illegal adoptions be possible? Angeline Montoya, special correspondent of World in Guatemala, signs a long survey on the subject. She tells us.
An episode produced by Clément Baudet, directed by Florentin Baume and presented by Morgane Tual.
“Time of the World”
“L’Heure du Monde” is the daily news podcast of the World. Listen to a new episode every day from 6 a.m. on Lemonde.fr or on Spotify. Find all the episodes here.
To learn more about illegal adoptions:
From tomorrow, listen to episode 2: “The fight for the truth of the stolen children”
Find the three-part survey by Angeline Montoya and Anne-Françoise Hivert: