NCFA Responds to FY2025 State Department Report on Intercountry Adoption: Children Deserve Both Ethical Safeguards and Permanent Families

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The National Council For Adoption (NCFA) today responded to the U.S. Department of State’s Fiscal Year 2025 Annual Report on Intercountry Adoption, which reports that 973 children joined permanent families through intercountry adoption in Fiscal Year 2025—a 17 percent decrease from Fiscal Year 2024’s total of 1,172 adoptions, continuing the long-term decline in intercountry adoption to the United States.

While the report provides important information about completed intercountry adoptions and the oversight of those processes, it does not address the number of children who are languishing in care despite the existence of ethical pathways to permanency. As policymakers, practitioners, and advocates review this year’s data, that reality should remain central to the conversation.

The continued decline in intercountry adoption reflects a complex set of challenges. Over the past two decades, evolving legal and regulatory frameworks, geopolitical events, increasing procedural complexity, and elongated timelines have collectively reduced opportunities for children to achieve permanency through intercountry adoption.

“Statistics are important because they help us understand trends,” said Kate Kennedy, Chief Executive Officer of the National Council For Adoption. “But every statistic also represents a child. Behind every completed adoption is a child who found their forever family, and behind every decline are children who are still waiting for the stability and belonging that a permanent family can provide.”

Intercountry adoption is neither the first nor the only permanency option for children. Whenever possible, children should be safely preserved within or reunified with their families or achieve permanency within their country of origin. However, when those options are not possible, ethical intercountry adoption remains an important pathway to ensuring that children—including older children, sibling groups, and children with medical or developmental needs—have the opportunity to grow up in safe, permanent, and loving families.

NCFA recognizes the State Department’s continued efforts to strengthen oversight, improve transparency, and promote ethical intercountry adoption practices in partnership with foreign governments, accredited adoption service providers, and other stakeholders. These safeguards are essential to protecting children, birth families, and adoptive families and to maintaining confidence in intercountry adoption.

At the same time, NCFA believes the conversation must extend beyond the number of completed adoptions. The ultimate measure of success is not simply how many adoptions occur in a given year, but whether children who cannot safely remain with or be reunified with their families, or achieve permanency through domestic adoption, have timely access to ethical pathways to permanent, loving, supported families through intercountry adoption.

“Children deserve both ethical protections and permanent families,” Dr. Dana Johnson, a pediatrician and NCFA board member, said. “Those are not competing priorities. Strong safeguards and timely permanency should work hand in hand to ensure that every decision is made in the best interests of the child.”

NCFA encourages continued collaboration among the Department of State, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, foreign central authorities, accredited adoption service providers, and child welfare leaders to:

• Promote timely, transparent processing of intercountry adoption cases while maintaining rigorous ethical safeguards.
• Strengthen relationships with countries committed to ethical intercountry adoption.
• Identify and reduce unnecessary administrative barriers that delay permanency for children.
• Provide support to accredited adoption service providers committed to ethical, child-centered practice.
• Keep children’s long-term well-being and need for timely permanency at the center of policy discussions.

“This report should serve as a call to action,” Kennedy said. “We have an opportunity to strengthen ethical safeguards, reduce unnecessary delays, and ensure that every child who needs intercountry adoption has access to a safe, transparent, and timely path to a permanent family.”

“The numbers in this report matter, but the children behind those numbers matter even more,” Dr. Johnson said. “As the Hague Convention reminds us, children should grow up ‘in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.’ That principle should continue to guide every discussion about intercountry adoption.”

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ABOUT NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR ADOPTION

Founded in 1980, National Council For Adoption (NCFA) is a global adoption advocacy nonprofit that promotes a culture of adoption through education, research, legislative action, and collaboration. As the authoritative voice for adoption, NCFA’s areas of focus include domestic infant adoption, adoption from foster care, and intercountry adoption.

For more information, visit www.AdoptionCouncil.org.

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