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Madonna in Malawi
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 30 March 2009
According to reports, Madonna has, as expected, arrived in Malawi to start the process of adopting a second child from the country.
The singer, who has been seen walking through the village of Chinkhota with her daughter Lourdes, apparently wants to adopt a three (or perhaps four – accounts differ) year old girl called Mercy James, whose eighteen year old unmarried mother died a few months after her birth. The child is presently in the charge of the same orphanage that Madonna and Guy Ritchie took little David Banda from back in 2006. According to Malawian officials, the star will sign adoption papers in the country’s capital, Lilongwe, in the coming week.
Madonna’s latest adoption has come in for criticism, though, as you might expect. David Nutt of Save The Children has said that he thinks the star should reconsider: “We don’t want to pick on one individual – any time, any set of circumstances can change. But the problem is, very often this is the wrong thing to do, and Madonna tends to make it seem like it’s the answer to everything and all problems, and it just isn’t”.
However, Steven Whitehead, spokesman from Oasis, a charity which supports families who adopt from abroad, has defended her decision, saying: “There are a number of children for whom inter-country adoption represents their only chance of having a family, and the human convention on the right of the child gives every child the right to a family. And it’s much better for them be in a family, wherever it may happen to be, than be in institutional care. The damaging effect of institutional care on children is so well recognised that, you know, it’s just not an issue of debate”.
There’s been no comment on the matter from Madonna’s reps, but as previously reported, Madonna recently admitted to the fact that she was considering finding a Malawian sibling for her adopted son David.
