Adoption and children's rights in French-speaking Africa: reflections on Malian and Senegalese law.

Summary The Malian and Senegalese adoption laws contain important gaps which the study intends to remedy. Indeed, the Malian and Senegalese legislators, in their work of codification of adoption law, have, in an unfortunate way, adopted the French legislation on adoption while ignoring the socio-legal realities of their countries. In these countries, there are two forms of legal adoption copied from the French models of adoption. For Mali, these are filiation adoption and protection adoption, and for Senegal, full adoption and limited adoption. This legislative typology of adoption suffers from a lack of balance and coherence both in its structure and in its purpose. Consequently, it does not present a sufficient guarantee of protection of the rights of Malian and Senegalese children. Alongside legal adoption, de facto adoption coexists in both countries, which resists the law. Indeed, the traditional and recurrent practice of children entrusted to foster families in these countries remains a space "strangely" unaddressed by the law. However, these de facto adoptions constitute a kind of social and emotional kinship that deserves to be the source of law. Moreover, the law of intercountry adoption in both countries is embryonic and deserves to be better developed. In this perspective, the guiding principles contained in the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption should be maintained and strengthened, and conflict of laws rules on intercountry adoption should be integrated into the domestic legislation of both countries, in a way that is more respectful of the best interests of children deprived of their family. These new rules will make it possible to determine the legislative jurisdiction and effectiveness in Mali and Senegal of adoption decisions rendered abroad in States not party to the 1993 Hague Convention.