Native Italians Elisabetta and Zamo Pavani came to Colombia 90 days ago, lugging suitcases filled with toys for two children they hadn’t yet seen but intended to adopt.
Yet today, the Pavani’s and 23 other couples who came to the country to adopt are stuck in a legal limbo, as Colombia’s more than two week old judicial strike has left not a single judge available to complete their adoptions, reports El Tiempo.
The Pavani’s plight, while hardly the gravest of the many repercussions of the present judicial strike, exhibits the wide-ranging effects the strike is having on Colombia.
Zamo Pavani, eager to carry his new children back to Verona, even visited Fabio Hernández, president of Asonal, the judicial union, Monday to ask if he could help, but found no solution.
“We can’t do anything for your family because the government doesn’t want to negotiate our demands,” Hernández told him.
The case of Elisabetti, a sports clothing retailer, and Zamo, an insurance company employee, is typical of what confronts to the other 23 families distributed across Colombia, Janeth Barragán, representative of La Dimora (La Morada), an adoption agency authorized by the Italian government, told El Tiempo.