The following alert was posted on the adoption.state.gov website:
May 13, 2009

Adoptions of Abandoned Children Halted by Ethiopian Court:
The Ethiopian First Instance Court has temporarily stopped accepting cases involving abandoned children from orphanages in Addis Ababa, citing concern over a recent increase in the number of abandoned children being brought for adoption. The number of abandoned children from orphanages in Addis Ababa has grown dramatically in recent months and Ethiopian authorities have become aware of possible cases of unethical practices associated with some of them.

Currently neither MOWA nor the First Instance Court are accepting any abandonment case from any orphanages in Addis Ababa pending an inquiry.

Please continue to monitor adoption.state.gov for updated information on Ethiopia.

We have discussed this situation with our facilitator in detail and he is confident that our cases will be fine. At this time the decision only affects children who were recently abandoned in Addis Ababa. All of our abandoned children have either been abandoned in other regions or were abandoned long before the suspicious activity began.
On Monday IAN will be on a JCICS conference call with the Ethiopia Caucus to address all of the issues surrounding this decision. At that time we will post another message updating you to any changes or any clarifications to the announcement. Please know that in international adoption things can change at any time, this announcement is based on our current understanding of the situation.