Given the time it takes for a single piece of legislation to pass through the labyrinth of the State Duma and the Federation Council before it is signed into law by the president, it should be reasonable to assume that most of the kinks would be ironed out before it reaches the statute books.


With the loopholes plugged and the limits and provisos of a law clearly defined, the question of implementation should then be relatively straightforward. A necessary first step would of course be to publish the law in question, ensuring that all parties affected are clear about where they stand. It would then be up to the relevant authority to ensure that no violations or transgressions occurred.


Two weeks ago, President Boris Yeltsin signed the final draft of the law on adoption, formally ending a legislative wrangle that had gone on for nearly a year and ostensibly defining the rights of hundreds of thousands of parentless children in orphanages and children's homes across the country. Its impact so far has been zero.


The reason is that, as with so many ineffectual laws and decrees that are passed by both president and parliament, the practical implementation of the adoption law has not been thought out. Nobody involved knows what to do with this latest piece of paper.


At the core of the law were measures to curtail the activities of commercial adoption agencies, which allegedly were procuring Russian babies for rich foreign buyers. The issue is highly charged emotionally and an earlier draft, passed by the Duma but vetoed by Yeltsin, had sought to limit all foreign adoption to handicapped children.


The final version is less sweeping and seeks merely to eliminate the profit motive from foreign adoptions. This seems reasonable. The problem is that publication has been held up to avert possible outcry over contentious issues in the law that apparently still remain unresolved, leaving all concerned, including would-be adoptive parents who have already started the process, completely in the dark.


The Education Ministry, responsible for implementing the law, appears to have no idea how operating licenses will be issued to adoption agencies and admits that it is likely to be a long time before all the necessary structures are in place.


Not only is this a shambles, it is unnecessary. As with the completely unenforceable AIDS law, the net effect could be to hurt those it aimed to protect. The AIDS bill was softened before it became law, but it still succeeded in damaging Russia's already weakened tourist trade. The incompetence of the new adoption law could hurt orphans or their would-be parents.


It is high time that this irresponsible 'fire and forget' style of lawmaking was stopped.