Corruption in the international adoption realm put the brakes on Cambodian adoptions more than six years ago. One person was sent to prison over this, an American woman named Lauren Galindo, and I think I'd be fair in saying this most likely didn't upset corrupt Cambodian officials one little bit.

Banning adoptions hasn't bothered them much either, or at least not enough to pass the anti-corruption legislation other countries are clamoring for.

You might think that having much of the world point fingers and condemn a country for corruption would be a concern for leaders in the accused nation, but aside from a bit of fluster bluster, most of the fingers are pretty well ignored. And for good reason.

Why should a country care?

Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Now, there's about as corrupt and degenerate a ruling body as can be found. Robert Mugabe's government has dragged the country from being what was known as the breadbasket of Africa into the mud and mess of raging inflation of more than 2,000%, the highest in the world, mass starvation and total economic collapse ... Mugabe and cohorts building massive fortunes in the meantime, of course.

Yes, they have had a few slaps on the wrists with the EU imposition of an arms embargo, travel bans and a freezing of Mugabe's assets held in Europe, but like Cambodia and other countries where corruption is not only rampant, but well recognized there has been no slacking off of aid money flowing in and no reprimand of consequence for bad behavior. Just the opposite.

Zimbabwe, in fact, was chosen on Friday to chair the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development, their intergovernmental body on the environment.

Well, that'll teach 'em.

When some objected, Australia's Prime Minister John Howard, for example, comparing Mugabe's 'security forces' to the Gestapo, Zimbabwe's ambassador to the UN responded: "What has sustainable development to do with human rights?"

If that's the response of a corrupt country's top diplomat, how do you figure minions involved in adoptions behave? And where is the motivation to feel or act any differently?

In adoption, it's not high finance or vast amounts of valuable resources at stake. There aren't billions of dollars fighting to make their way into the pockets of top-level officials. It's only about children, and the money is peanuts. Actually, the big money comes when a country has legions of starving, sick and dying children ... aid by the bucket-load pours in when you can produce enough of them, so halting international adoption works out well when looked at from that angle, too.

Here's a link to a blog from inside Zimbabwe that shows what life in a country so thoroughly corrupt is like.

For a look at putting this into context in the bigger world, see the next post.