Elvira Loibl is Endowed Professor of Recognition, Dialogue and Repair after Intercountry Adoption at the University of Humanistic Studies and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at Maastricht University. She is a legal scholar and criminologist and has devoted most of her academic career to research on intercountry adoption. In her work, she combines criminological and legal perspectives with insights from human rights and, more recently, transitional and transformative justice.
DIALOGICS OF JUSTICE
In 2019, Elvira Loibl defended her PhD dissertation, The Transnational Illegal Adoption Market: A Criminological Study of the German and Dutch Intercountry Adoption Systems, at Maastricht University. In this research, she identified structural weaknesses in the German and Dutch adoption systems and examined how these weaknesses enable and facilitate illegal practices in intercountry adoption. Since then, her research has increasingly shifted towards the aftermath of intercountry adoption and the question of how states and institutions respond to past injustices and their continuing consequences.
She recently co-edited the volume Facing the Past: Policies and Practices for Responses to Illegal Intercountry Adoptions with David Smolin. The book brings together contributions from international scholars across different disciplines as well as from adoptees themselves, and examines how societies and institutions can respond to past injustices in the field of intercountry adoption. Building on this collaboration, she founded Facing the Past (www.facing-the-past.org), an international network of scholars conducting research on illegal intercountry adoption and its aftermath.
Her current research examines what meaningful recognition and repair require from the perspective of those directly affected. She is particularly interested in the diversity of adoptees’ experiences, questions of identity and access to information, and the relationships and power dynamics that shape encounters between adoptees and state institutions. A central concern in her work is not only which measures of recognition and repair are or should be offered, but also how these processes are organised, whose voices are heard, how responsibility is understood and negotiated, and how the institutional structures and relationships that shape them might be transformed.
Contact: e.loibl@uvh.nl
PUBLICATIONS
Loibl, E. (2026). De deur sluiten of het pad verleggen? Het Nederlandse verbod op interlandelijke adoptie en het risico van omzeiling. Tijdschrift voor Familie- en Jeugdrecht, 48(6), 228-234. Article FJR 2026/38.
Loibl, E., & Hoksbergen, R. (2026). Opinie: Adoptie is ongewenst, ook van weeskinderen. Trouw. https://www.trouw.nl/opinie/opinie-adoptie-is-ongewenst-ook-van-weeskinderen~b403dbfc/.
Loibl, E. (2026). Intercountry Adoption and Historical Injustice: Reflections from the Conference ‘How to Repair Historical Injustice?’. Blog article, Facing the Past, https://facing-the-past.org/intercountry-adoption-and-historical-injustice-reflections-from-the-conference-how-to-repair-historical-injustice/.
Loibl, E. (2026). Justice Out of Reach: Why Tort Law Fails Intercountry Adoptees. Blog article, Facing the Past, https://facing-the-past.org/justice-out-of-reach-why-tort-law-fails-intercountry-adoptees/.
Loibl, E. (2026). Erkenning, dialoog en herstel na interlandelijke adoptie: introductie van een nieuwe bijzondere leerstoel. Blog article, Facing the Past, https://facing-the-past.org/erkenning-dialoog-en-herstel-na-interlandelijke-adoptie-introductie-van-een-nieuwe-bijzondere-leerstoel/.
Loibl, E. 2025). “Justice Delayed? Dutch State and Agency Liability in Historical Cases of Illegal Intercountry Adoption.” Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 0(0).
Loibl, E., Smolin, D.M. (eds.) (2024). Facing the Past: Policies and Good Practices for Responses to Illegal Intercountry Adoptions. Eleven International Publishing, The Hague.
Loibl, E. (2024). “Receiving States’ Obligations in the Aftermath of Illegal Intercountry Adoptions as Enforced Disappearances.” In Loibl, E., Smolin, D.M. (eds.), Facing the Past: Policies and Good Practices for Responses to Illegal Intercountry Adoptions. Eleven International Publishing, The Hague.
Loibl, E., Mackenzie, S. (2023). “The organisation of crime in the transnational adoption market.” In Nelen, H., Siegel, D., Organized Crime in the 21st Century. Motivations, Opportunities, and Constraints. Springer, Cham, 25-42.
Loibl, E. (2022). “Abdi Ibrahim v. Norway: A New Zeitgeist Regarding (Intercultural) Adoptions at the ECtHR.” Blog article, Strasbourg Observers, available at https://strasbourgobservers.com/2022/04/11/abdi-ibrahim-v-norway-a-new-zeitgeist-regarding-intercultural-adoptions-at-the-ecthr/.
Loibl, E. (2022). “Eine kritische Betrachtung des deutschen Auslandsadoptionssystems und dessen Zukunft.” Das Jugendamt, (4), 182-185.
Loibl, E. (2022). “The Future of Intercountry Adoptions in the Netherlands: Challenges and Possible Reforms.” Tijdschrift voor Familie- en Jeugdrecht, 44(2), 69-75.
Loibl, E. (2021). “The aftermath of transnational illegal adoptions: Redressing human rights violations in the intercountry adoption system with instruments of transitional justice.” Childhood, 28(4), 477-491.
Loibl, E. (2021). “The ECHR and private intercountry adoptions in Germany and the Netherlands: Lessons learned from Campanelli and Paradiso v. Italy.” Family & Law, 2021, 1-19.
Loibl, E. (2020). “Trafficking in Children for Adoption Purposes: A Criminological Analysis of the Illegal Adoption Market.” In Winterdyk, J.A. and Jones, J. (eds.), The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking. Palgrave Macmillan, 401-417.
Loibl, E. (2019). “The German and Dutch intercountry adoption systems: Weaknesses that facilitate the trafficking in children for the purpose of adoption.” Tijdschrift voor Familie- en Jeugdrecht, (5), 104-110.
Loibl, E. (2019). The Transnational Illegal Adoption Market: A Criminological Study on the German and Dutch Intercountry Adoption Systems. Eleven International Publishing, The Hague. (Dissertation)
Tribowski, C., Loibl, E. (2017). “Internationaler Adoptionskinderhandel und die Kontrollfunktionen von Landesjugendämtern: Kritik und Reformen in vier Thesen.” Das Jugendamt, 2, 58.
Loibl, E. (2016). “Crime in the Intercountry Adoption Industry: Towards a Broader Definition of Child Trafficking.” In Moerland, R., Nelen, H. and Willems, J.C.M. (eds.), Denialism and Human Rights. Intersentia, Cambridge, 119-134.
MEDIA
Elvira Loibl appointed Endowed Professor of Recognition, Dialogue, and Redress following Intercountry Adoption
The University of Humanistic Studies has appointed Elvira Loibl as Professor of Recognition, Dialogue and Recovery following Intercountry Adoption. The endowed chair has been established by INEA, the centre of expertise on intercountry adoption. Elvira Loibl will focus both on research into the recognition of past abuses relating to intercountry adoption and on how healing…
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Intercountry Adoption and Historical Injustice: Reflections from the Conference ‘How to Repair Historical Injustice?’
Elvira Loibl attended the Dialogics of Justice Final conference ‘How to Repair Historical Injustice?’ and shares her reflections on Intercountry Adoption and Historical Injustice in this blogarticle, originally posted on the website of Facing the Past. Part of her reflection is how it became clear that intercountry adoption can be understood as part of a…
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