Will Madonna's adoption get hung up in court?
A Malawi judge plans to issue a ruling next Monday on whether a coalition of human rights groups in the southern African nation can dispute the Material Mom's interim adoption of a 13-month-old boy.
Justice Andrew Nyirenda delayed his decision until Nov. 20 to give him more time to consider the case and determine whether another plaintiff, the Malawi Human Rights Commission, should be added to the suit which was filed by a consortium of 67 activist organizations who've claimed the government skirted regulations in allowing Madonna to adopt the tyke.
"Basically what we are asking the court is that we want to be joined as a party to the assessment because we have legal issues we want to raise," Justin Dzonzi, an attorney representing the coalition, told reporters after Monday's hearing.
Dzonzi is chairman of the Malawi Human Rights Consultative Committee, the alliance that instigated the legal action.
The rights groups stress that they're not out to stop the 48-year-old pop superstar and her husband Guy Ritchie from adopting. Rather, they are attempting to ensure that government officials didn't confer preferential treatment on the couple because of their celebrity status.
In Madonna's case, the coalition contends that adoption officials made an end-run around a rule requiring every adoptive parent to be a resident in the country for 18 to 24 months so local authorities can decide if they are fit to raise the child before a judge grants full adoption rights. As it stands, the Ritchies were in and out of the country with the boy, David Banda, in a matter of eight days in October.
However, Malawi officials have indicated that residency is not a necessarily a requirement and asserted that social workers abroad would monitor the Ritchies for an 18-month period.
Failure to enforce such procedures are a big concern for the alliance, which is seeking an overhaul of outmoded adoption laws and closer monitoring to clamp down on abuse and what it says is an all too common occurrence of illegal adoptions that go on in the African country and fail to protect the rights of the children.
"Over 1,000 Malawian children are being adopted illegally every year and yet the laws say international adoption are permissible," added Dzonzi. "There is no system to monitor how these adopted children are treated, wherever they are."
Madonna's Malawian legal eagle, Alan Chinula, maintained that the Ritchies went through the same red tape as any prospective adoptive parents when it came to taking custody of David.
"My clients followed all legal channels; if the laws are archaic it's not the Ritchies' fault," the BBC quoted the lawyer saying.
The baby's father, 32-year-old farmer Yohane Banda, has also voiced his opposition to the lawsuit, expressing concern that it could harm his son's future.
In an interview with Time magazine last week, Madonna spoke out about the controversy, calling the media's scrutiny a bid to sell papers and a "gross misappropriation of attention and money" from the fact that there are a million orphans in Malawi, all of whom need loving homes.
The singer justified her love by saying that she never worked so hard for anything in her life as adopting David and "the idea that people think I got a shortcut or an easy ride is absolutely ridiculous."
Madonna, who's building six orphanages through her Raising Malawi charity, also maintained that her mission is simply to "save lives" and any criticism to the contrary is "utterly irrelevant."
In any event, the adoption brouhaha has not dulled her desire to expand her brood.
In a separate sit-down with the BBC, the "Ray of Light" purveyor indicated that she would consider adopting again from abroad sometime in the future.