See Ask the EU

http://www.asktheeu.org/en/request/762/response/2971/attach/html/2/DG%20ELARG%20BDT%2088%202007%201341.pdf.html

Delayed until after VideoConference with US

S

The Pink Embassy

By W. JAMES ANTLE III • May 24, 2004

As U.S. Ambassador Michael Guest prepares to end his mission to Romania later this year, retrospectives on his service are likely to accentuate the positive. Under his watch, the government in Bucharest remained firmly in the “New Europe” camp: Romania contributed troops to the Iraq War, joined NATO, and was usually strongly aligned with America.

But other observers of his tenure paint a less glowing picture, believing that a changing of the guard at the U.S. embassy is long overdue. Guest’s critics charge that his ambassadorship has sent a different message abroad than most Americans would care to transmit, exporting not democracy or free markets but the sexual revolution.

When Bill Clinton selected the homosexual hot dog heir James Hormel to become ambassador to Luxembourg, it was a highly controversial move. Senate Republican leaders placed a hold on the nomination and forced Clinton to grant Hormel the assignment through a recess appointment. However, criticism of George W. Bush for appointing Guest, an openly gay man, to the post of ambassador to Romania was muted. While party loyalty was a major factor in this contrast, it was also the case that some senators objected to Hormel not due to his sexual orientation as such but rather because he was considered likely to use his ambassadorship as a government-sanctioned platform for gay-rights advocacy. There were no similar concerns about Guest, who was a 20-year career diplomat, lifelong Republican, and former Reagan administration press aide. Yet some Americans serving their country in Romania contend that a transformation in the embassy’s culture took place nevertheless. As the gay marriage debate raged at home, taxpayers began to foot the bill for a de facto civil union in Bucharest.

.

Protocol Working Method Bureau Central Authoritywhen granting a permitto mediate in international adoptionor extension of the validity periodof that permit

IntroductionThe inclusion of a foreign child in a Dutch family for the purpose of adoptionof the child is a very traumatic event. That is partly why the Dutch government feelswho is involved in this recording has a major responsibility. Thatresponsibility is reflected in the fact that intercountry adoption is surrounded by the necessary legislation that must ensure that certain principles andsafeguards are observed. For example, there are regulations regarding the organizations thatmediate regarding the admission of a specific foreign child in a specific Dutch settingfamily. These intermediary organizations cannot carry out their activities until afterthey have received a permit for this from the Minister of Justice.

"Leaganul" pus sa creasca spioni

email print

0

Autor: prof. dr. Liviu Turcu 15 Mai 2004 - 00:00

De mai bine de 25 de ani, da, repet, de peste 25 de ani guvernantii Romaniei, fie ei din era Ceausescu fie post-Ceausescu, se confrunta in relatiile internationale cu o problema care afecteaza direct interesele si imaginea publica a statului roman: problema copiilor institutionalizati.

For more than 25 years, yes, I repeat, for more than 25 years, the rulers of Romania, be they from the Ceausescu or post-Ceausescu era, have been faced in international relations with a problem that directly affects the interests and public image of the Romanian state: the problem institutionalized children .

The common denominator for the persistence with which the international community refuses to remove this topic from the political and moral agenda is, above all, the still unsatisfactory situation of the living conditions of these children. Starting with the animal kingdom and ending with what we call a civilized human society, the way in which the mentioned communities relate to the protection of their own offspring is customarily constituted as the supreme criterion that delimits "normality" from the state of "degeneration".

Case Study

For reasons that are not exclusively of a financial-economic nature, and which should invite the Romanian intellectual elites to a serious reflection, the problem of institutionalized children and especially of international adoptions continues to be the subject of a political ping-pong in the country's international relations. A more careful analysis of the causes of this persistence can be, paradoxically, a real barometer of the general political strategy itself and especially of the foreign policy carried out by the current rulers. In this sense, the latest polemical "developments", on the edge of a barely disguised diplomatic conflict, between Bucharest and Washington represent an interesting "case study" intended to demonstrate the consistency of the above statement.

Before embarking on this foray, as one who has addressed this tragic topic several times both informally and in the mass media, I feel the need to specify from the very beginning that naturally "the place of institutionalized children was and it must be in Romania". The tradition of the Romanian people has always been that, regardless of the size of the resources, "parents should go out of their way to ensure their children maximum comfort and physical and mental well-being". How much was affected in the last 50 years the moral fiber of the Romanian to reach the situation where not the orphans, but the children abandoned by their own parents and including their relatives to "produce" today's amazing share of this category per the total number of institutionalized children, by the gravity of the social implications, it far exceeds the dimension of misery and poverty circulated as the only explanatory factor. Add to this situation the lack of social solidarity and the ignominy of the ruling political class and you will have in the mirror of 2004 a hideous image of the "actual state of the nation" in which the rulers continue to give priority, it is fair, peripheral, only to the effects and not to the causes what is proliferating this compromising phenomenon for the entire country. The great dilemma in terms of decision-making was and continues to be the critical threshold where, seriously considering the number one priority, namely "protecting the fundamental interest of the child", in the absence to a satisfactory national solution, one must resort to others, of higher quality, such as international adoptions.

.

AMADEA, an NGO founded in 1986, Authorized Body for Adoption (OAA) authorized for Madagascar since 1990 and member of the French Federation of OAA (FOAA), found itself confronted and attacked head on by what seems to be a network of illegal adoption in the region of Toamasina (Tamatave) in Madagascar.

The French adoption organization has signed a partnership agreement with the Nomena center which takes in abandoned children on this part of the island.

Nôry, a 2.5-year-old girl, is one of these children and her judgment of adoption by a French family is pronounced on 5/11/2003. It will only be notified 2.5 months later (legal appeal period: one month).

In January 2004, an illegal network, orchestrated in all likelihood by a couple of Franco-Malagasy restaurateurs neighboring the children's institution, came to the fore. The man, Mr AA, a Malagasy jurist, is an ambitious political figure, his companion, Mrs FC, is French. They take care together of the management of a hotel located a few hundred meters from the center. Without it being possible to identify the origin of the rumour, many in Mahambo believe that they are responsible for the center. Fraudulently pretending to be someone close to Amadea, it was therefore not difficult for Madame to show the center to candidates looking for children to adopt.

For a few months, in fact since the electoral campaign for the municipal councils, the Malagasy Association which manages the center was opposed to its former director dismissed from his functions following serious shortcomings, busy as he was leading the electoral campaign of Mr. AA. The dismissed former director then never ceased to file complaints against the staff and officials of the Malagasy association, citing in particular abuse of children (while it was at the time of the facts that he denounced, himself the first local official!). This layoff was the subject of an agreement signed by the 2 parties on 6 Nov 03.

Flanked by 10 American families and their adopted children, Michael Guest threatens:

"Romania's place is not in the Western structures, if it does not adopt a correct law for children"

The American comedy of caring for Romanian orphans continues

Mrs. Debra Murphy Scheumann, from the "Hope for Children" Foundation, one of the many American non-governmental organizations that support the resumption of international adoptions, presented, yesterday, at the residence of the US ambassador, 10 American families, who came with their adopted children from Romania, for to demonstrate that the little ones are not mistreated, destined for organ trafficking or pedophilia. On the steps of the sumptuous residence sat in a family photo parents and children whose broad smiles wanted to convey, in a symbolic form, the same message that Ambassador Michael Guest spoke in his official capacity: "This meeting it is important, because I firmly believe that we must do everything we can to soften the law" (n.n. - it is about the current provisions that make international adoption practically impossible). Because he is convinced that family values are the most important, Ambassador Guest had his mother and father with him, whom he thanked for taking care of him, and explained that the requests and the lobby he makes America for the resumption of international adoptions are not "a problem between the EU and the USA.

From the American side, the imperious requests of the EU to ban adoptions are not seen as homogeneous, since, says Mr. Ambassador, "there are many members of the EU who do not I agree with banning adoptions from Romania", and "the issue of adoptions is not part of the community acquis". The ambassador wanted to firmly state that the position of the American government is that "this law must be changed", "those who study the problem must keep your eyes open" and that both the EU and the US want to stop corruption in this area and create structures to prevent corruption.