We have been horrified to learn about the scale of the allegations against SOS Children’s Villages in Syria, following reports in the media. Children are at the heart of everything we do, and learning about what these families have been through is truly heartbreaking. They deserve our full support and outrage.

We have been horrified to learn about the scale of the allegations against SOS Children’s Villages in Syria, following reports in the media. Children are at the heart of everything we do, and learning about what these families have been through is truly heartbreaking. They deserve our full support and outrage.  

In the UK, we pride ourselves on having extremely high standards when it comes to supporting the work of our international programme partners.  

During the civil war in Syria, it now appears that those high standards were not being met by the team at SOS Children’s Villages Syria, a national member of the SOS Children’s Villages Federation.  

“From December 20, 2022, to September 1, 2025, a total of 21 children of the state have been adopted by prospective parents," Shimla Deputy Commissioner Anupam Kashyap said.

Two orphaned children, being taken care of under the “Children of the State” programme, were adopted by two couples from Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh at Shishu Grah (Infant Home) at Tutikandi in Shimla.

Shimla Deputy Commissioner Anupam Kashyap said, “From December 20, 2022, to September 1, 2025, a total of 21 children of the state have been adopted by prospective parents. The state government’s meaningful efforts are helping give a new life to these children.”

The DC appealed to prosperous members of society to come forward and adopt children growing up in infant homes and child welfare institutions to provide a happy and bright future to these children.

Shimla District Programme Officer Mamta Paul said, “Prospective adoptive parents, who apply, are selected for adoption based on merit. Only those who fulfil the rules and conditions as per the relevant act are eligible for adoption.”

Tobias Hubinette’s findings on illegal international adoptions confirmed by investigations in Seoul and Stockholm

Two decades ago, when Tobias Hubinette began publishing research papers on the dark history of Korea’s overseas adoption program, his work was dismissed as radical, even extremist.

Now, the Swedish adoptee — born in Korea as Lee Sam-dol — is seeing both Seoul and Stockholm acknowledge what he has long maintained.

Earlier this year, state-run commissions in both countries found widespread human rights violations in intercountry adoptions from the 1960s to 1990s, when the adoption of Korean babies to the West was at its peak.

The Delhi Police arrested 10 people, including a doctor, last month.

It was nearly midnight on August 22 when Suresh, a brickmaker travelling to Behror in Rajasthan, woke up at the Sarai Kale Khan ISBT and got the scare of his life. While his wife and three other children were asleep beside him on Platform 2, his six-month-old son was nowhere to be found.

After frantically looking for his child, Suresh approached the nearby Sunlight Colony police station and a case of kidnapping was registered.

What Suresh could not have known that night was that his baby’s disappearance would crack open a larger child trafficking network operating across the country with 10 people, including a doctor, being arrested last month.

During its probe, the police noticed two middle-aged men approaching the sleeping family and leaving the bus terminal with the infant in CCTV camera footage. However, the police could not trace their movements once they stepped outside the ISBT.

Adoptee human rights advocate Simone Eun Mi stood before lawmakers on Sept. 2 with a question that has haunted thousands of Koreans sent abroad as children: “Where is my home? When will I have the right to be in Korea?”

It was the fifth time she had been invited to speak at the Assembly. Her remarks were part of the “Korean Diaspora: Memories Across the Sea, National Responsibility Beyond Borders” forum, which brought together policymakers, scholars and diaspora representatives.

More than 250,000 Korean children were adopted overseas in the decades following the 1950-53 Korean War, most of whom were not true orphans but children born to single mothers who lacked state support. For many, returning to Korea as adults has brought new difficulties: visa insecurity, lack of housing and no guaranteed access to adoption records.

“These are not isolated tragedies,” Simone told the audience. “They are the outcome of policies that treated children as numbers to be exported, not citizens to be protected.”

For the last two months, 20 people have died due to the Melioidosis virus in Turakapalem village

Melioidosis outbreak: Andhra wakes up after 20 deaths, declares health emergency in Turakapalem

Amaravati: Waking up to suspected Melioidosis deaths, Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu has declared a health emergency in Turakapalem village and rushed all infected people to hospitals.

Between 1970 and 1990, Geertruida Kuijpers not only arranged irregular adoptions of Chileans to the Netherlands, but also purchased a large number of properties to operate in La Cisterna and Buin. In the 2000s, she donated a large portion of the properties to the Integra Foundation, while selling others to Jehovah's Witnesses and her former right-hand man in Chile.

Despite the passing of years, the story of Geertruida Kuijpers, who arranged irregular and illegal adoptions from Chile to the Netherlands, continues to be written. A well-known fact, but one that has not been fully explored, is the donations of real estate that this fake Dutch nun made to the Integra Foundation in the early 2000s. 

Specifically, these were six properties that Kuijpers acquired in the 1970s and 1980s with cash payments and then, thirty years later, without his personal motivations being known, were transferred to the institution. 

In this context, four properties located in the El Bosque district of Santiago were donated: one on Caminos de Chile Street and three in Los Aviadores, donated in 2004. 

In addition, Kuijpers had his own foundation called Stichting Kindertehuis Las Palmas Foundation, which he also used to manage donations, but in Buin. One was located on Calle San Martín and the other in Balmaceda in 2005. 

The Telangana High Court has declined to interfere with the action of the Child Welfare Committee and District Child Protection Unit in taking away the custody of an adopted child residing with the petitioner, holding that the adoption process was illegal. The Division Bench of Justice Moushmi Bhattacharya and Justice Gadi Praveen Kumar has further held that a petition for habeas...
 

SOS Children’s Villages is actively supporting family tracing and reunification in Syria, while continuing to support children and young people without parental care. We stand with families searching for their children, and we are committed to uncovering the truth about children who were forcibly separated from their families and placed in care by the former regime. 

During the Syrian war, many children were forcibly and unnecessarily separated from their families by authorities and placed into care, often without proper documentation. In this time of extraordinary instability, these placements reflected the absence of a child protection system grounded in international standards – in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.  

SOS Children’s Villages condemns the former regime’s practices of forcibly separating children from their families and assigning falsified or incorrect names to children. We acknowledge that, under that regime, some children who had been forcibly separated from their families were referred to our care without the necessary documentation. 

We took decisive action in 2018 to halt the placements of children into our care without proper documentation. It is our firm belief that children should never be separated from their families unless it is in their best interest – and only through a documented, child-centered process. 

We recognize that, despite our best intentions, not all decisions made during this time met the high standards to which we hold ourselves. Learning from these shortcomings, we have taken active steps to ensure this does not happen again.

BRUSSELS — Plans to overhaul the EU’s executive arm will be brought forward by the start of next year at the latest, leaked documents reveal, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pushing for a restructure to make its labyrinthine civil service more efficient and cost-effective.

According to a document seen by POLITICO, the bloc’s budget and public administration chief Piotr Serafin has been tasked with “a large-scale review of the Commission’s organisation and operations, together with an external benchmarking exercise.”

The intention is to deliver a “modern, efficient public administration to deliver on our political priorities,” while also being able to handle “volatility as the new normal” and reduce both complexity “and, where possible, costs.”

Two Commission officials, granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive process, said that alternative models were being considered whereby departments could be merged.