The number of children from Africa being adopted by foreign nationals from other continents has risen dramatically, a report has said.

In the past eight years, international adoptions increased by almost 400%, the African Child Policy Forum has found.

“Africa is becoming the new frontier for inter-country adoption,” the Addis Ababa-based group said.

But many African countries do not have adequate safeguards in place to protect the children being adopted, it warns.

The majority of so-called orphans adopted from Africa have at least one living parent and many children are trafficked or sold by their parents, the child expert group says.

More than 41,000 African children have been adopted and taken out of home countries since 2004, the ACPF report says.

More than two thirds of the total in 2009 and 2010 were adopted from Ethiopia, which now sends more children abroad for adoption than any other country, apart from China.

Adoptable children shortage

Ethiopia has more than 70 adoption agencies, including 15 that only refer children to families in the United States.

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Karen Brown with her two adopted children, one-year-old Nyla from Rwanda and four-year-old Makena from China

Hong Kong (CNN) — Nyla was just two or three days old, no one really knows for sure, when she was found abandoned in the middle of a field in Rwanda. She was “black and blue,” says her adoptive mother, Karen Brown. Her umbilical cord was still attached.

One year later, Nyla lives in a high-rise building in Hong Kong with American parents and a four-year-old sister who is Chinese. She just started walking and has “seven-and-a-half” teeth, though she’s too shy to show them.

The bright-eyed baby is one of more than 35,000 children sent from Africa in a surge of adoptions in the last eight years, according to adoption expert Peter Selman from Newcastle University in the UK.

During that time, figures have risen three-fold at the same time as international adoptions from all countries have slumped to a 15-year low, Selman said.

A new report from The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) entitled “Africa: The New Frontier for Intercountry Adoption,” says the trend indicates that receiving countries are turning “en masse” to Africa to meet demand for adoptive children as other options close. It’s a trend, they say, that needs to stop.

“It must at all costs be discouraged. It should be a last resort and an exception rather than the normal recourse to solving the situation of children in difficult circumstances, as it seems to have now become,” said David Mugawe, executive director of the ACPF in a press statement.

The group says that the lack of regulation combined with the promise of money from abroad had turned children into “commodities in the graying and increasingly amoral world of intercountry adoption.”

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LilyAna, from Ethiopia, and her sister enjoy some water fun in the summer sun! How will your family stay cool during the summer months?!

Addressing Global Orphan Malnutrition

Worldwide, children living without permanent parental care are at heightened risk for under-nutrition, putting their health and development in great jeopardy. Yet without proper resources, caregivers and professionals are unable to meet the specific nutrition and feeding needs of these children. OrphanNutrition.org is an international portal, part of A Child’s Best Start program, for specialized feeding and nutrition training, best practices, literature reviews and information to effectively equip caregivers and professionals with the tools they need to protect the health of vulnerable children around the globe.

Please also check out the growth charts-

http://www.orphannutrition.org/nutrition-best-practices/growth-charts/