Sweden should ban international adoption and apologise after thousands of children were illegally and unethically taken from their home countries including South Korea, Colombia, China and Sri Lanka over several decades, a government inquiry has found.

Presenting the damning findings of the almost four-year investigation, the head of the inquiry, Anna Singer, accused the Swedish state of “violations of human rights”, citing child-trafficking cases spanning from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Some children were adopted without voluntary and informed consent while thousands of others were taken to Sweden with false documents. Often, authorities did not have signed documentation showing consent from the biological parents, even if their identities were known.

International adoptions to Sweden started in the 1950s and continue today. Overall, more than 60,000 children have been adopted from countries around the world. Other affected countries included Chile, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland, Ethiopia and Russia.