High Court asks Delhi Police to set up taskforce

Harish V Nair, Hindustan Times

New Delhi, March 17, 2011

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First Published: 00:30 IST(17/3/2011)

Google translation:

Raise money for foster parents
Valentina Simeonova, Deputy Minister of Labour
and Social Policy

- Mrs. Simeon, what increase in social benefits is being considered because the prices of food and fuel?
- The social assistance system is not a means to cope with economic problems. It is focused more on how a specific person to deal with a personal problem. Of course, all these phenomena have economic and social manifestations. Many people get poorer and become clients of social assistance. Social benefits are tied to guaranteed minimum income, which is 65 EUR preparing estimates of how much money will be needed to increase it, taking into account inflation. It is 5.2% currently. If so by increasing the guaranteed minimum income would require 7.5 million additional budget costs. Because the release of the guaranteed minimum income leads to increase in all social payments - monthly social assistance, allowances for people with disabilities and children's allowances.
- How many people are on welfare in our country?
- For all of 2010 116,000 people were receiving social assistance. Monthly average they are 44 342. Moreover, the Integration of Persons with Disabilities last year assisted 543 thousand. Target heating subsidies received 206,452 persons, child benefit - 570,577 families.
- What happens to the big reform that began last year - the closing of specialized institutions for children and keeping them in conditions close to family?
- This is a complex and lengthy process. Year and a half, however, managed to reverse the perception of us as Bulgaria's Mogilino in a country that has been identified as the most successful model of reform for the deinstitutionalization of these children. We have already begun and implementation of specific projects. Rated all of the homes for disabled children and homes from 0 to 3 years - more than 3000 children. By May municipalities will be ready with their projects for new small family homes and start their construction. Start a new project to foster care with much greater resources - 15 million of the Operational Programme "Human Resources".
- How many children currently being raised in foster care?
- Thanks to the help of our partners by UNICEF last year sharply increased the number of foster families. So far these are accommodated 559 children. Only in 2010 housed 221, ie a 50% growth. We will make a standard that takes into account real life, and are likely to increase funds for maintenance and payment of foster families. At the moment it is up to 360 leva for a foster parent, depending on the number of children. We want to encourage people specialists to address this serious work, not just unemployed people to become foster parents.
- How many babies are abandoned annually?
- Still the number is over 2000. Most worrying is the fact that half of these children are still abandoned in the maternity hospital. This means that we lack for prevention. Will increase the number of protected points "Mother and Child, where the first 6 months professionals caring mother to acquire parenting skills. There are currently 10 - too weak. We have planned to build such centers in all districts. During this six months, while single mothers are in them will be sought for accommodation. People from the EU still can not believe that Bulgaria babies are abandoned in institutions. There immediately after birth is a professional foster family. Meanwhile prepare the environment for its adoption.
- It became clear that to write a new law on child and family. Why have it?
- Our idea is to integrate the whole matter to children in a single act. Moreover, the current law on child protection focus are children at risk. The new law will be based on the fundamental rights of children, creating an environment that ensures the proper development of children in Bulgaria. And the family and responsible parenthood will be part of this new law. Like all institutions with clear responsibilities for the care and development of children. For those who do not fulfill their responsibilities, there will be sanctions. Including parents. There are many ideas for penalties for poor parents, although I am more incentives for good. Including available and the criminalization of child abandonment, such as legislative practice in many countries. It is unacceptable to abandon children. But if you go to criminality, that means we need to create an environment to support parents so that they do not abandon their children. The project will be ready in late April.
- And what incentives will be offered for good parents?
- Think for individual family support. For example, parents whose children attend school and show results in the learning process, to receive more aid. Support can be both financially and materially - clothes, books, computers. They will target groups at risk, because there is a problem, but the best parents in most cases do not rely on social assistance system.
Mila Kisiova

Over 800 gangs part of India’s missing children trial, says CBI

Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times

New Delhi, February 21, 2011

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First Published: 21:16 IST(21/2/2011)

Police told to probe child trafficking gangs

2011-03-16 18:40:00

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New Delhi, March 16 (IANS) The Delhi High Court Wednesday took a serious view of police failure to trace missing children and directed Delhi Police chief to constitute a task force to find out if gangs were involved in child trafficking.

The division bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Sanjiv Khanna pulled up police while referring to a report filed by the Delhi Legal Services Authority stating that over 500 children missing since the past one year have not been rescued.

Adoptietweelingen soms geen familie

Toegevoegd: zaterdag 2 jun 2007, 17:39

Na de berichten over het Indiase adoptiekind dat door de moeder wordt teruggeëist komen andere adoptiekinderen met hun verhalen. Verhalen over tweelingen die geen tweelingen blijken te zijn, met een afkomst die een heel andere is dan in de papieren staat vermeld.

Leanne en Kumudini zijn allebei als adoptietweeling uit Sri Lanka naar Nederland gekomen. Leanne met haar tweelingbroer, Kumudini met haar tweelingzus. Als zij later onderzoek doen naar hun afkomst blijkt dat er niks van het verhaal klopt.

De foto die Leanne van haar moeder heeft, blijkt niet haar moeder te zijn. Ook blijkt na DNA-onderzoek dat zij en haar broer geen bloedband hebben.

"La dictature a tué mes parents"

Rédaction | Jean-Baptiste Mouttet | 14/03/2011

0

Cinq cents bébés auraient été volés lors de la dictature en Argentine. Un procès met à jour cette page sombre de l'histoire. Alejandro Pedro Sandoval est un de ces enfants.

Des prisonniers politiques jetés à la mer depuis un avion, des hommes et femmes torturés dont les proches n'auront plus jamais de nouvelles, des accouchements en détention, des enlèvements d'enfants... Depuis le 28 février, les Argentins sont confrontés aux pages noires de leur histoire avec l'ouverture du procès sur le vol des bébés. Ce procès n'aurait pu se dérouler sans le travail d'investigation des grand-mères de la Place de Mai. En cherchant leurs proches disparus sous la dictature (1976-1983), elles ont écrit les pages de l'histoire de leur pays.

Lost in Vasai 31 yrs ago, sisters found in Sweden

The girls who, as minors, were separated from their family, were later adopted and taken abroad


Ram Parmar
Posted On Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 06:38:20 AM


Thirty-one years after her daughters - five-year-old Ghulab and three-year-old Laxmi went missing in Vasai - Jamnibai Dhangad, a daily wage labourer, still lives in the hope of meeting them again.



Thanks to the efforts of a string of do-gooders over the last three decades, the chances of that happening are closer than anyone would’ve imagined, but still some way from being a happy ending.

The daughters have been traced to Sweden, and travelled to India a couple of years ago hoping to reconnect with their biological mother, but after that failed attempt, their communication has been restricted to an exchange of photographs and a letter the daughters have now written her.

When the girls went missing, Jamnibai filed a complaint with Vasai Police Station. Days passed by and there was no trace of the girls, forcing Dhangad to approach activist Peter D’Souza, who worked with Catholic Co-operative Bank in Vasai.

Another activist, Marcus Dabre, joined the search, and found out from the Nana Chowk Police Station in Grant Road that the two girls were found by cops and sent to the Umerkhadi Children’s Home. That was in November 1980.

When the children’s home authorities couldn’t help, the family filed a petition in the Bombay High Court.



(From left) Anna and Sophia wrote to their mother Jamnibai Dhangad in 2008. They were traced thanks to the efforts of activist Marcus Dabre among others

Three years later, in 1983, the HC was told that two girls who matched Ghulab and Laxmi’s age and description were registered at a shelter home in the city known to give up children for adoption to foreign nationals.

Dabre said, “The court contacted the shelter home’s founder Mridula Rao, who confirmed the two girls were adopted by Ericcson and Preet, a couple from Sweden. However, Rao only had basic details of the couple and that didn’t help.”

The activists approached Cardinal Simon Pimenta, who wrote to all churches in Sweden requesting details of the two girls.

The story was published in local newspapers in 1985, following which a photographer, Rafique Elyas, contacted the family. It took another two years before Elyas met the family in 1988.

Gradually, Dhangad and the activists started coming to terms with the possibility of never finding the girls. But in 2008, Dabre says, they received an email from the Swedish Consulate confirming the women’s address.

“The girls’ pictures were shown to Jamnibai, who initially went numb, and later cried hysterically.”

Jamnibai’s search may have ended, but her ordeal has not, as she is yet to meet her daughters because of financial constraints. What she does know is Ghulab is now known as Anna, while Laxmi was renamed Sofia by her adopted parents.


Ghulab is a nurse and has a three-year-old son Casper while Laxmi works in a hotel and is the mother of two daughters, Rebecca, 7, and 10-year-old Clara. They communicated with Dhangad but she was unable to read the letter written in English.

Dhangad said, “The only aim in my life is to meet my daughters. I am so happy to learn they are well-settled. I’m told their respective husbands take good care of them.

Hopefully before I die, I will be able to meet them, and my grandchildren.” Dabre said, “Dhangad has a passport and hopefully one day, she will fly out to Sweden to meet her daughters.”

Kaisa Hammar from Goteborg, who played a huge role in tracing the women, said she was in talks with them. “I am so happy that Anna and Sofia have found their biological family again. A day will come, hopefully, when a grand reunion will happen.”

Elyas, who has followed the case closely, prefers to wait for that day rather than celebrate prematurely. “On the one hand, we have a tribal woman with an organic hunger to meet her daughters.

On the other, we have the two daughters, who have grown up in Sweden as Swedish citizens, and are well settled in life. For them, making the effort to meet their mother is a much bigger journey than any of us can imagine.”