I'm happy to report that even though the movement to put a halt to the option of international adoption continues to tick over in the US, other parts of the world are catching on to how right it is to present the option of families to children in other countries.

In Iceland, for instance, the Iceland Adoption Society is investigating adoption by Icelandic families of children from African nations.

“We are looking to other countries, including African countries like South Africa and Ethiopia,” the managing director of the Iceland Adoption Society Gudrún Sverrisdóttir told Bladid.

Adoptions from China have been an option for a few years, but China's new regulations and increased wait times have encouraged officials in Iceland to begin looking at developing programs in other countries where the numbers of children suffering without benefit of parents are huge.

Of course, the number of potential adoptive families is relatively small, as Iceland is a small country, but 50 applications for adoption were submitted in 2005, and 66 in 2006, and for the 116 children who may have found families in that land of steam and warmer-than-expected weather for a place with 'ice' in its name, the count would have been just about right.

Moving from north to south, from cold to warm ...

If you have children from Haiti, you'll be interested in the section of this report from the Human Rights Council that addresses Haitian-specific issues.

Haiti apparently expressed its gratitude for the work of the Independent Expert, Loius Joinet, and asked they get an extension on their mandate of reform.

Since coming into power, the Government had set itself the goals of fighting poverty and strengthening of the rule of law, through the reform of the judiciary system, among others. In parallel, the Government was actively working to implement policies for the protection of human rights, and to improve the status of women. A plan of action on security had been adopted and, these days, peace had almost returned to the streets. The Government was also stepping up its activities for national and foreign investments to fight poverty.

Although representatives of some countries ... Cambodia, for one ... have been critical of country-specific mandates, accusing them of not promoting human rights and having a negative effect on the country, the apparent success of the dialog between the Haitian Government and their Independent Expert seems to indicate that the relationship can work.

The country has yet, however, to address issues of violence against women ... rape is not a criminal act and husbands are allowed to murder their wives ... the establishment of paternity and the responsibilities that come with, or family planning programs.

The changes the Human Rights Council are happy about appear to be mostly in vetting of police and reform in the justice system.