For the moment, the two most important treaties on adoption are the The Hague Convention of 1993, which deals with international adoptions, and the CoE Convention of 1967 about national adoptions. "The latter treaty however has been recently revised to reflect changes in society and in the law". Next week, the Committee of the Ministers of CoE will review a new draft convention, "chiefly in the light of the jurisprudence of the European Court for Human Rights of Strasbourg" (the Court recently reprimanded France and established that those states that authorise single parents to adopt must make no discriminations based on sexual orientation). News introduced by the draft convention include shared as well as controversial points. They include: the obligation to consider a competent child’s opinion about his/her adoption; the duty of the national authorities concerned to carry out "in every case an appropriate investigation before any adoption"; the "ban on any type of financial profit" from adoptions; "the extension of the right to adopt to unmarried heterosexual couples" who have officially registered as a couple and "to single parents". (continued)” ” ” “
