Adoptees’ Right to Know

This article examines adoptees’ right to know (RtK) within the context of adoption. While the RtK is recognized as central to the adoptee’s right to identity, this study highlights that there is a lack of conceptual clarity surrounding this right in the international legal framework and, therefore, promotes some conceptual clarifications. The study assesses key international sources – the UN Declaration, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, the Revised European Convention on Adoption of Children, and relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights focusing on adoptees in general – and identifies the concept of the RtK as an instrumental right. This right intends to provide, preserve, and reestablish the adoptee’s identity as well as give them access to information concerning their origins and the information they need in order to discover the truth about their identity. The study also identifies the RtK as a right that recognizes the value of information about one’s background. It finds that, although the RtK encompasses information on biological origins, identity, and background, these terms are inconsistently defined. Furthermore, the RtK’s connection to the right to personal development, as protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, emphasizes the right’s role in supporting adoptees’ holistic growth and mental health. This study argues that the RtK’s current legal scope may be too vague and inadequate to address adoptees’ needs in practice, particularly when it comes to ensuring that they have access to comprehensive information about their birth circumstances, biological family’s medical history, and sociocultural background. It also sheds some light on the semantical difference between the right to knowledge and a right to access information and its normative consequences. This study, thus, contributes to legal research on adoptees’ rights and advocates for the creation of clearer legal definitions so as to support adoptees’ lifelong access to identity-relevant information. Lastly, this article illustrates the need for international and/or domestic legal advancements to be made to address adoptees’ unique identity-related rights, bridging the gaps that remain in current frameworks.