There were annually around 400 adoption applications in Singapore. Adoptions should be encouraged, not just for the wholehearted act of love that it embodies, but also to mitigate our dismal TFR (Total Fertility Rate).
It is thus very concerning to receive news of investigations by Indonesia into an alleged baby-trafficking ring supplying babies to Singapore for adoption. This raises questions about regional efforts to curb child-trafficking.
In November 2025, Workers’ Party NCMP Andre Low filed a Parliamentary Question about regional co-operation among ASEAN countries to protect against child trafficking in inter-country adoptions. In answer, MSF Minister Masagos mentioned the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action on the Elimination of Violence Against Children from 2016 to 2025. Domestically, he highlighted that child-trafficking was criminalised under the Adoption of Children Act. He further stressed that robustness of the adoption process, which included the verification of the child's identity papers, travel documents and conducting checks with birth parents to ensure they had given valid consent and had not offered the child for adoption for improper financial or material gain.
In 2022, MSF tabled the Adoption of Children Bill, to introduce a specific regulatory framework governing adoption. The framework includes a requirement for adoptive parents to disclose to the Court the payments they have made to the birth parents and others in the process and to seek the Court’s sanction for these payments. It would also be an offence to obtain the birth parents’ consent by fraud, duress or undue influence.
The question is: When it comes to children sourced from overseas, how effective are these provisions?
Finally, the ongoing Indonesian investigations have led to delays in adoptive parents applying for Singapore citizenship for their children. In the meantime, adoptive parents have to pay higher childcare related expenses without a clear end point, which has been straining and demoralising. I would like to repeat my call to MSF to extend citizen-rates to those children, especially where both parents are Singaporeans.
