A/HRC/34/55 ensure that those safeguards are respected, thereby preventing the abduction and sale of and/or the trafficking in children. As at December 2016, 98 States were parties to the 1993 Hague Convention.17 24. Article 3 (1) (a) (ii) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography establishes that, in the context of the sale of children, improperly inducing consent, as an intermediary, for the adoption of a child in violation of applicable international legal instruments on adoption must be criminalized both domestically and transnationally. Article 3 of the Optional Protocol is understood as containing specific examples of illegal acts that lead to the sale of children in the form of illegal adoption. While the sale of children always includes some form of commercial transaction, illegal adoptions can be performed in violation of existing national laws without necessarily amounting to the sale of a child. 18 The Hague Conference on Private International Law defines illegal adoption as an adoption resulting from abuses, such as abduction, the sale of, traffic in and other illegal or illicit activities against children.19 25. In the context of the present report, adoptions resulting from crimes such as abduction and sale of and trafficking in children, fraud in the declaration of adoptability, falsification of official documents or coercion, and any illicit activity or practice, such as lack of proper consent by biological parents, improper financial gain by intermediaries and related corruption, constitute illegal adoptions and must be prohibited, criminalized and sanctioned as such. 26. Illegal adoptions violate multiple child rights norms and principles, including the best interests of the child. That principle is breached when the purpose of an adoption is to find a child for adoptive parents rather than a family for the child. In that regard, it must be emphasized that international norms and standards do not establish the right to adopt a child or the right to be adopted. C. Forms and methods of illegal adoptions 27. There is no reliable data on the number of children who have been or are being adopted as a result of being sold, trafficked or subjected to other illegal acts and illicit practices. Firstly, reliable figures are difficult to establish owing to the illicit and clandestine nature of those activities. Secondly, illegal adoptions can appear legal since many of the children concerned receive, at some point in the process, “official” adoption papers. 28. The abduction of babies (e.g. through kidnappings or by falsely informing parents that their baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth), the improper inducement of consent (e.g. through misrepresentation, bribery or coercion) 20 and improper financial gain (e.g. through payment for the child or the payment of bribes to intermediaries involved in the adoption process) are among the most common methods used in the sale of children and illegal adoptions. Inherent to the methods is the falsification of documents (e.g. birth and medical certificates, the identification documents of the biological mother, DNA test results and relinquishment or abandonment declarations) and the bypassing of regulations. 17 18 19 20 See https://www.hcch.net/en/instruments/conventions/status-table/?cid=69. See http://luxembourgguidelines.org. See https://assets.hcch.net/upload/adoguide_e.pdf. When consent is absent, reference is often made to the notion of forced adoption. 7