Thousands of Sri Lankan Adoptees Still Searching for the Families They Lost

Link to story

Decades after thousands of Sri Lankan children were adopted overseas, growing efforts to reconnect them with their biological families are revealing personal stories, disputed records, and the lasting legacy of a little-examined chapter in the country’s adoption history.

For more than three decades, a woman known here as Dilhani has lived in France, raised by the couple who adopted her as an infant from Sri Lanka. She was born at the Avissawella Base Hospital during the first week of July 1993 and spent her first three months in the care of her biological mother in the Karawanella area before leaving the country. Today, despite a lifetime shaped by her adoptive family, one question has remained unanswered: who is she?

The search for that answer has become a defining part of her adult life. Armed with only fragments of information—that her birth mother was born in 1954 and came from Matara—Dilhani has spent years trying to trace her origins. Even with assistance from the French Embassy, the search continues. The absence of certainty about her identity, her biological parents and any siblings has remained a persistent void.

Her story is one among many emerging from a generation of Sri Lankan children who were adopted abroad during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.As adults, many are now searching for the families they left behind, while biological parents who relinquished or lost children decades ago are seeking a final opportunity to reconnect.

One such parent, identified here as Amarawathi, still remembers the day a foreign woman arrived at her home after locating an address linked to her past. Her son turned the visitor away, explaining that no one by the name she sought lived there. Only later did Amarawathi begin to wonder whether she had unknowingly turned away the daughter she had spent decades hoping to see again.

She recalls noticing something familiar in the young woman’s face. The sight revived memories she had long tried to bury. Forty-four years earlier, while working at the Katunayake Garment Factory, she became pregnant with her first child. The child’s father, whom she identifies as Vijay, never returned to claim responsibility for either mother or baby. Keeping the pregnancy hidden from her parents, she relied on the support of a friend before eventually giving up the child. Amarawathi later rebuilt her life, marrying an army officer and becoming the mother of two more children. Yet the memory of her first-born daughter has never faded. She still hopes to see her daughter once before the end of her life. These individual stories reflect a wider and often complicated history of intercountry adoption from Sri Lanka. According to Sanjeewa de Mal, head of the organisation known as Soyamu, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Sri Lankan children were adopted by foreign families between 1970 and 1990. The organisation was established to assist adopted adults and their biological families in tracing their origins through what it describes as a sensitive and confidential process.

De Mal says many of those adoption records contain significant inaccuracies that complicate efforts to reunite families. According to him, the birth certificates of a considerable number of adopted children do not reflect accurate information, while court records, hospital birth documents and regional registration records from the period often contain unreliable namesand addresses. In some cases, he says, multiple children may have been registered under the name of a single mother, making verification extremely difficult decades later. He also raises broader questions about how children were transferred overseas under the legal framework that existed at the time. According to Soyamu, both Sri Lanka and the countries that accepted adopted children share responsibility for shortcomings in the adoption process, particularly regarding documentation and oversight.

Data collected by the organisation indicate that France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany received the largest numbers of Sri Lankan children adopted during those two decades. International research has also documented the scale of those adoptions. Official studies, including the Netherlands’ Joustra Report and Switzerland’s ZHAW report, recorded particularly high numbers during the 1982-1992 period. Dutch records documented 460 Sri Lankan adoptions in 1984, rising to 537 in 1985 and 565 in 1986. French records cited in those reports show 297 Sri Lankan children adopted in 1986 alone, while a total of 1,694 Sri Lankan children were reportedly adopted in France between 1979 and 2021.

As those adopted children have become adults, increasing numbers are attempting to reconstruct family histories from incomplete or conflicting records. Soyamu says it has received many requests from adoptees seeking biological relatives, while comparatively few biological parents have approached the organisation. De Mal says the programme is equally open to

both groups and that every search is conducted with careful attention to the dignity and privacy of all parties involved.

Reunions, however, are rarely straightforward. The emotional complexity surrounding adoption, separation and rediscovery means that reconnecting families often requires psychosocial support. Even when relatives are successfully identified, decades of separation and differing life experiences can make rebuilding relationships a delicate process.The search for identity is also supported by international legal principles. The right to know one’s origins and preserve one’s identity is recognised under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which affirms every person’s right to preserve their identity, including nationality, name and family relationships. International adoption standards were further strengthened through the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, adopted in May 1993. Sri Lanka became the third country in the world to ratify the convention, which entered into force in the country on 1 May 1995.

The convention was designed to protect children, biological parents and adoptive parents by ensuring that international adoptions are conducted transparently, legally and ethically while preventing child abduction, trafficking and the sale of children. Sri Lanka’s own adoption laws have evolved over several decades. Beginning with legislation introduced in 1944, amendments in 1960, 1964 and 1979 sought to strengthen legal safeguards. Yet subsequent investigations into abuses during the 1980s suggested that weaknesses remained within thesystem.

Following investigations and police raids into illegal childcare centres, the government imposed a nationwide ban on all foreign adoptions on 8 June 1987. The prohibition remained in place until 1988. Further legal reforms introduced in 1992 placed all foreign adoptions under the authority of the Department of Probation and Child Care Services.

Central to many accounts of that period is the history of Sri Lanka’s so-called “baby farms.” Operating under the appearance of providing shelter to vulnerable women, including unmarried mothers and those facing severe poverty, these institutions have been linked in various investigations to allegations of child trafficking, document forgery and illegal overseas

adoptions. According to the source material, allegations also emerged that some children were taken from hospitals, while brokers arranged separations between mothers and infants before facilitating adoptions abroad.Investigations into those networks identified patterns including repeated use of the same medical practitioners for thousands of adoption-related reports,

concentration of legal proceedings in a small number of courts and lawyers, and visa applications that, in some instances, were reportedly processed before biological mothers had formally granted legal consent. Soyamu says its work is not intended to investigate or prosecute historical wrongdoing. Instead, the organisation focuses on helping internationally adopted adults and biological families reconnect where possible. It says the information it collects remains confidential and is not shared with outside investigators or researchers. Operating free of charge, its stated objective is to rebuild family connections by assisting both adoptees and biological relatives in navigating a complex search for identity.

For Dilhani, Amarawathi and thousands of others separated by time, geography and incomplete records, that search continues. Their stories illustrate a chapter of Sri Lanka’s adoption history that still unfolds across continents, as families seek answers to questions that have remained unresolved for decades.