In the early 2000s there were around 40,000 intercountry child adoptions worldwide, most of them concentrated in a few countries of origin (China and Russia) and a handful of receiving countries (headed by the United States). Between 2004 and 2013, the number fell by two-thirds in France and throughout the world. The shortage of adoptable children is due to a decline in the number of orphaned or abandoned children and an increase in domestic adoptions in countries of origin, but also to a range of political measures to eradicate child trafficking through stricter controls on intercountry adoption. Most of the children available for international adoption now have “special needs”.
