[1] The convention has been considered crucial because it provides a formal international and intergovernmental recognition of intercountry adoption to ensure that adoptions under the convention will generally be recognized and given effect in other party countries.

With respect to the previous multilateral instruments which include some provisions regarding intercountry adoption, the Hague Adoption Convention is the major multilateral instrument regulating international adoption and calls for the need for co-ordination and direct co-operation between countries to ensure that appropriate safeguards are respected.

[7] However, instances of trafficking in and sale of children for the purpose of adoption continue to take place in many parts of the world.

In the fiscal year of 2006, the Department of State Office of Children's Issues assisted in the return to the United States of 260 children who had been abducted to or wrongfully retained from other countries and 171 children were returned from countries that are Convention partners with the United States.

[8][This statistic, though accurate and interesting, refers to returns of wrongfully retained children under the 1980 Hague Convention (on Abduction) and is not relevant to the 1993 Hague Convention (on Adoption)] Especially during emergency situations, natural disasters or conflicts, children are observed to be adopted without strict legal procedures being followed, with a risk that there may be cases of child trafficking.