Ten years of “Dima Yakovlev’s law” in seven graphs – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

On December 28, 2012, President Vladimir Putin signed the so-called Dima Yakovlev Law, which prohibited Americans from adopting orphans from Russia. The document is named after a boy who died in the United States due to the fault of his foster family. What orphanhood looks like ten years after the adoption of the law – in the infographic “Kommersant”.

According to data The Ministry of Education for 2021, the country is home to 391 thousand orphans and children whose parents do not fulfill their duties or are deprived of their rights – this is about 2% of all children in Russia. Of these, 35.3 thousand are in organizations for orphans and 4.5 thousand are under the care of government agencies. According to the federal portal Adopt.ruright now, 38,123 children in Russia are looking for a family.

Compared to 2014, there are one and a half times less orphans in Russia, analysts from the Road of Life Foundation calculated. Experts attribute this to a drop in the birth rate, a reduction in the abandonment of infants and disabled children, and a softening of the policy to deprive parental rights.

In Russia, there are several forms by which children are transferred to families. Some of them are reimbursable (paid) – for example, foster and foster families. “Parents” actually work as educators. They receive salaries or are even registered as freelance employees of the orphanage.

If the child is taken by blood relatives, they most often arrange guardianship or guardianship. The guardian becomes the legal representative of the child, receives an allowance for him and controls his property, but is not considered a parent. The Family Code considers adoption to be a “priority form”. The child is legally recognized as a relative and enjoys all the rights of natural children.

Despite the wishes of the Family Code, the share of paid guardianship is growing in Russia and the percentage of adoptions is declining. According to the Ministry of Education, in 2013, 31% of children were placed in paid care families and 13% were adopted. At the end of 2021, paid forms accounted for 35%, and adoptions only 7% (not counting temporary options and returns to parents).

According to the latest information from the Ministry of Education, about 19% of adopted children are raised by foreigners. Many of them took problem children, such as disabled people. In the year the “Dima Yakovlev Law” was signed, 7% of children adopted by foreigners had a disability, among Russians – 0.4%.

At the time of the signing of the law, children from Russian orphanages were most often taken away by citizens of Italy and the United States. Over ten years, international adoption in Russia has decreased by 22 times: the share of foreigners in new adoptions has fallen from 18% in 2013 to 2.6% in 2021.

Dima Yakovlev died after the foster father closed the boy for nine hours in a hot car from the heat. Supporters of the law named after him said that with the help of the ban they protect orphans from cruelty. However, statistics from the Ministry of Education show that adoptive parents resort to violence less often than guardians, trustees, adoptive and patronage parents (all these forms of family arrangement are not available to foreigners). In 2021, 66 children suffered through the fault of adults who were responsible for them, among them 7 from adoptive parents (10%).

In 2021, about 5.3 thousand children were returned to shelters. Sometimes this happens at the initiative of the guardianship authorities, when new parents do not fulfill their duties of upbringing or treat the child cruelly. The Road of Life Foundation estimates that in 2014, there were five cancellations for every 100 decisions to place a child in a family, and in 2021 this number has grown to seven.

In 2012, every tenth child taken from an orphanage by the Americans came to the United States from Russia. “Dima Yakovlev’s Law” stopped this flow. But even if it is canceled, the previous figures are unlikely to return – now Americans are much less likely to adopt children from abroad. Russians have also become less likely to adopt children and more often return them to orphanages.