TEHRAN – The number of children adopted in Tehran increased by 25 percent in [the past Iranian calendar] year 1396 (March 2017 – March 2018) compared to the year before, deputy head of Tehran’s welfare organization for social affairs said.

Some 500 children were adopted by Tehraners last year, a 25-percent growth year on year and a 70-percent growth compared to year 1394, ISNA quoted Ahmad Khaki as saying. 

Totally, some 3,600 individuals have registered for child adoption in the organization’s website, he highlighted.

As far as the gender of adopted children is concerned, 60 percent of them were boys, he added.

Among these adoptions, 184 children were suffering from different diseases, said Khaki, considering this kind of adoption as an “admirable new attitude” prevailing among Iranians. 

According to Iran's Welfare Organization, the country's adoption and foster laws which dated back to some 44 years ago were revised and modified in 2013. Within the new law kids could be adopted up to the age of 16 while the former law states that kids aged 12 or less could be adopted. In addition to families with no child now families with one kid and single women are able to apply for adoption.

The law formerly authorized adoption only for orphans while the new law permit adoption for children with dysfunctional families as well in case the judge concludes that the new family is suitable for adoption. 

Earlier the adoptive families were required to sign over one third of their property to their child-to-be but some could not afford to do so and now the judge gets to decide how a family, depending on their financial status, should be treated.

MAH/MQ/MG