By Zeina Allouch

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With the start of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, it becomes crucial to acknowledge that child trafficking for illegal adoption is not simply a human rights or social issue, but a form of gender-based violence.

The recent scandal involving a doctor who participated in childbirth procedures and then forged birth and illegal adoption documents in South Lebanon has reopened a fundamental question: how many shocks does this country need before it reconsiders an entire legacy of child trafficking that persisted for decades under the rhetoric of “charity” and “saving children”?

This incident is not isolated, and it cannot be treated as the individual wrongdoing of a single doctor. It is part of a long history of uprooting children and sending them to distant destinations where the truth is erased and identity is reshaped.

The history of our shores is filled with stories of child trafficking for adoption, which intensified in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide. During that period, thousands of young survivors were transported by boat to the United States and later dispersed across the American West in what later became known as the Orphan Train Movement. Many of these children ended up in farms or in hard labour rather than in families or homes. That model created the foundation for a pattern that later repeated itself in Lebanon: extreme poverty, ongoing conflicts, weak institutions, foreign destinations ready to receive children, and an international adoption market constantly searching for “new sources.”

During the Lebanese civil war, this phenomenon became even more violent. Estimates indicate that more than ten thousand children were taken abroad through illegal or semi-legal routes, within networks that included doctors, midwives, brokers, lawyers, and public employees. Each actor played a specific role in a complex process that began at the moment the child was born and did not end when they entered another country.

Documentation that we worked on at “Badael-Alternatives,” as well as doctorate research on illegal adoption and the forced separation of children during the war, confirms that our legacy of child trafficking for adoption is deep, extensive, and rooted in the mechanisms of trafficking and in the complicity of legal and institutional structures that helped enable it. All of this proves that what we are seeing today is simply a continuation of a process that never truly stopped over the past three decades.

The current case shows once again that the doctor involved in forged birth certificates is only the tip of the iceberg. Child-trafficking networks are never limited to a single person. They are entire systems of relationships, files, and links that operate across hospitals, clinics, local governance entities, courts, and extend into embassies, receiving countries, and adoption agencies abroad. This does not absolve any individual from responsibility. On the contrary, focusing on one person is another form of concealment that allows the network to survive. The scale of the crime can only be understood if the entire structure is dismantled. That also requires addressing the conditions that compel women, most of them minors, to give up their children. These conditions are not voluntary. They are the result of poverty, social stigma, lack of support services, and the absence of any realistic option that would allow those facing an unwanted pregnancy to make an informed decision and receive the protection they need.

The adoption documents we collected through the work of Badael show how deeply entrenched this system is. Some children were issued passports with no expiration date, falsified birth certificates, and official documents produced without the slightest verification. These are not gaps. They are tools used by networks skilled at hiding the truth and creating trafficking pathways across the country.

The central question is not only about the supply side, who forges, who facilitates, who smuggles, but also about the demand. Child trafficking for adoption continues because there are countries ready to accept children coming from fragile contexts without asking serious questions about the pathways used or the conditions under which they were separated from their families. International adoption thus becomes part of an unequal global economy shaped by power relations between a wealthy North and an exhausted South. In this narrative, adoption is framed as “rescue,” giving receiving countries a moral legitimacy that prevents them from seeing the other side of the process: children are not “humanitarian goods” moved from one place to another, and birth mothers are not people whose voices can be erased.

Within this context, society itself becomes part of the problem when it regards adoption as an act of charity. This simplistic narrative conceals the structural violence experienced by women who find themselves in conditions of profound vulnerability. “Abandonment” is not a free choice. It is the result of the complete absence of social, legal, and health protection for both parent and child. Public acceptance, which tends to justify adoption as an act of compassion, unintentionally sustains this system. When the voice of the mother is erased and the identity of the child is reshaped, the crime becomes invisible.

With the start of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, it becomes crucial to acknowledge that child trafficking for illegal adoption is not simply a human rights or social issue, but a form of gender-based violence. It is violence that affects women when every pathway that could protect them from stigma and poverty is closed. It is a silent violence, but it leaves scars that stretch across generations.

It is good that the doctor has been exposed, but we must confront the entire system that enables these practices. What is required goes much further. It calls for a fundamental rethinking of the legal framework that facilitates trafficking. A broad investigation is necessary, one that goes beyond individuals to dismantle the networks involved. At the same time, we must guarantee the full right of adoptees to access their information. Girls and women remain the most vulnerable, particularly given the difficulty of accessing support programs that could protect them from being pushed into forced relinquishment.

The current scandal is not just an event. It is a mirror reflecting what we have not yet dared to acknowledge: Lebanon has been and continues to be weighed down by a complex patriarchal structure that has produced thousands of invisible stories of mothers separated from their children by trafficking networks, and children raised with fabricated identities.

The real question today is not who falsified the papers of a single child, but who benefited from this system, who protected it, and why it continues to this day. Unless we insist on confronting this issue with courage, the network will keep operating, children will continue to be taken in silence, and women will remain alone with the pain of multiple losses.