Melbourne-based lawyer Michael Garner says a decision to close an adoption program between Australia and Ethiopia has had life-changing consequences for at least one would-be adoptee.
"The four-year-old girl is back living on the street with her mother who is a beggar," Mr Garner told SBS.
"[The mother] has malnutrition, she lives on the street and the four-year-old girl is with her begging on the street. She would have been in Australia living with a family today, but for the closure of the program."
Mr Garner is representing several Australian clients who say they are baffled at a decision to shutdown an adoption program that has been running between Australia and Ethiopia for 22 years.
Most of his clients expected they would successfully adopt an Ethiopian baby or child after passing the rigorous and intensive eligibility test.
Mark and Annette Pearce successfully adopted an Ethiopian boy eight years ago. Unable to have a family of their own, the couple welcomed Abraham to Australia as an 11-month old.
"He's just a delight and just makes things so much nicer," adoptive mother Annette said. "You hear the noises of a child [around the house]."
Abraham is now a well-adjusted nine-year old, who enjoys school, cricket and hockey.
He is beginning to question his identity, but understands how different his life could have been.
"I think I'm a lot luckier than being in some of the orphanages in Ethiopia, which are now …they're starting to send kids back onto the streets. But I think I'm lucky now that I've got a home."
But the Pearces were on the cusp of adopting another child from Ethiopia when the government unexpectedly closed the program in June 2012. They say the explanation they were repeatedly given was that it was "complex and challenging".
But the decision still left them devastated.
"We were absolutely gutted, partly because our file had been pulled," Mark Pearce said.
The Pearces were among several Australian families to undergo the intensive process to gain eligibility for the adoption program.
Inter-country adoption generates a range of views and many oppose the practice. Both Michael Garner and the Pearce family considered the program ethical. Apart from the scrutiny the adoptive parents must pass, Mr Pearce says the potential adoption goes through several checks and balances in Ethiopia.
UNICEF, which estimates there are 5 million orphans in Ethiopia, says it conditionally approves of inter-country adoption. But the organisation says that the rights of the child must remain the priority in all circumstances.
"If the authorities are competent, if all the parties have consented, if the same safeguards that would be apparent in a national country are apparent in these agreements - and most importantly there's no improper or undue financial gain for those involved - there is no reason why this should not be taking place because, really, there are so many children in need," UNICEF CEO Dr Norman Gillespie told SBS.
Lawyer Michael Garner is now lobbying the government to reopen the program.
He rejects its assessment that no children were affected by the closure and that there were no active files, saying "that’s factually inaccurate and we have documents to show that's inaccurate."
Mr Garner says there were 27 active files at the time of the closure and at least seven Ethiopian children were matched with Australian families.
"The government had an obligation we say to complete those files which it didn't do," he said.
The attorney general's office provided SBS with a brief statement saying "the matter is under consideration."
But for families like the Pearces, it is a ray of hope.
"There is just no good reason why the program shouldn't be reopened," Mark Pearce said. "We have people in Australia who want to give these children loving and caring homes."
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