QUB Human Rights Centre Seminar Series

Recent jurisprudence on Adoptee Identity Rights: New Truths and Tokens, Old Tropes?
Dr Alice Diver, School of Law, QUB

Despite its emphasis on accessing medical information, the recent ECtHR decision in Mitrevska v North Macedonia [2024] has been framed by some as a significant milestone for adoptees seeking to challenge state-fabricated secrecies surrounding their natal ancestries, kinships, and early life histories (Helmhart, 2024; Dute and Goffin, 2024). The Strasbourg Court has previously highlighted the need to avoid deprivation of origin where possible within the various ‘constellations’ of adoptive kinship (Grand, 2011) and across the vagaries of family life (in, for example, Anayo v Germany [2010], I.S. v Germany [2014], and the Dissenting Opinions in Odièvre v France [2003]). It has stopped well short however of endorsing a full-blown right to access – or in any way own – one’s own birth information. The reasoning in Mitrevska might still resonate though with those orphanized via relinquishment processes in domestic law, particularly within jurisdictions that are currently undergoing (or attempting to craft) just systems for reparation or redress involving adoptee rights of access to sealed, vetoed, or altered birth records (e.g. Northern Ireland, South Korea, Canada). Likewise, those who must decision-make on issues of adoptee identity and welfare within domestic courts may be struck by certain inconsistencies of reasoning. Cases such as Seddon (2015) and In the Matter of Two Children: Freeing for Adoption (2022) suggest that adoption orders generally denote ‘…no real prospects for rehabilitation or family reunification’ (para 20) even where there seems to be some scope for remembered relatedness ‘rights’ to exist, arise, or be protected e.g. via judicial tolerance for mnemonic devices: photographs, gifts, or types of contact. That said, in Re T & R (Refusal of Placement Order) (2021) the benefits of familial contact were stressed, in terms of actively preserving original kinship ties and cultural heritage. There are further parallels here with archaic foundling tokens, those small but significant identifier objects left behind deliberately by first mothers in the hope that their ‘relinquished’ infants might one day seek them out. A key question, arguably, is that of ownership: who actually owns - or holds on trust perhaps – the various items (such as medical records or original birth certificates) that can contain or embody individual, identifying truths and some right of access to them?

Thursday 3 April at 12:00pm in The Board Room (MST.09.022)