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Hole that swallows babies - hjow kids are spirited away

Hole that swallows babies
-how kids are spirited away
CHANDREYEE GHOSE AND SANJOY CHATTOPADHYAYA
When a child is born roughly every two seconds, some babies of unfortunate mothers will leak out of the system and go on the market for adoption at a price.
Manwara Seth, of Canning, has filed a petition in Calcutta High Court claiming her child was stolen from a government hospital in South 24-Parganas and sold to a childless couple. The couple insisted that they had paid Seth’s family for the child, who is now seven.
Public prosecutor Asimesh Goswami said: “A DNA test has been ordered to decide who his future guardian will be.”
The Telegraph exposé in Saturday’s paper had revealed how a baby-selling network operates with the connivance of nursing homes, mostly in Calcutta’s suburbs, and doctors, audaciously turning an illegal transaction legal.
Government hospitals are as leaky. A health officer at one revealed that in two cases over the past four-five months, he had received information about abandoned babies but they were gone before he could take them to a children’s home.
On a third occasion, he was informed about a baby being abandoned, but when he went to get it, the baby was missing, only to reappear miraculously when he raised a hue and cry.
Unwanted babies can be made to elude the official network at many points. The first is where the baby is found or rescued. Under the rules, a rescued baby has to be presented before the state government’s Child Welfare Committee — there is one in each district —within 24 hours of its being found. Only this committee has the authority to issue a fit-for-adoption certificate for a baby.
Whether a child is produced or not depends on the intentions of the finder. With nursing homes and hospitals not being too particular about sticking to the law, the committee has no way of sniffing out who is spiriting away babies where.
Abandoned babies are rescued by Childline, an NGO that has the government’s support, and by police, and produced before the committee. Mothers who want to surrender their babies have to go directly before the committee. This is on paper.
The Calcutta committee recently asked a hospital for an explanation why a four-month-old baby was handed over directly to a couple.
“The couple had approached the court, arguing that since the child was ill and needed special care, they could not go to the committee first and delay the whole process,” said Amita Sen, the chairperson of the Calcutta committee.
In Calcutta, there may not be full compliance with the rule of taking the baby before the welfare committee, but the situation is better than in the districts. Indrani Sinha, a member of the South 24-Parganas committee, said: “Abandoned babies are rarely presented before the committee. One or two a month, maybe.”
They are handed directly to parents wishing to adopt and, since the process takes place outside official supervision, a range of unwanted results for the baby becomes possible.
Till last year, the committee’s existence went unheeded by the system though its pivotal role as the custodian of abandoned and surrendered babies was worked into law in 2006. Sen said: “Most agencies would not bring the babies before the committee.”
The acronym-laden layers of the adoption structure, a creation of government guidelines and Supreme Court directions, worked the way they felt best until 2009. Neither the Central Adoption Resource Agency, which is the mother body for adoption in the country, nor the Bengal social welfare department, its state-level representative, did anything beyond the odd half-hearted attempt to straighten out the system.
One example of their reluctance to act relates to an adoption monopoly that grew under a lawyer named Anil Bhuniya, who was allowed for two decades till 2009 to approve, scrutinise as well as, allegedly, hand babies over to adoptive parents. Bhuniya denied that he was ever involved in the last activity.
Apart from once writing a letter objecting to Bhuniya’s role in approval as well as scrutiny, the central agency did nothing. The social welfare ministry even helped Bhuniya establish control over the system.
The Telegraph sent a questionnaire to the central agency seeking to clear doubts about how the adoption system works and about overlapping laws, of which there are three. After sitting on it for two weeks and several reminders, it sent this helpful reply: “You have asked so many questions. Please see CARA (the agency)’s website… for more details.”
It did reveal, though, that a probe is under way against one of Bhuniya’s two organisations. It does not reveal that for years it — and the state social welfare department — had failed to set up in Bengal a second approval mechanism, known as the adoption co-ordinating agency, to smash Bhuniya’s hold.
In another example of inaction, the government, in Delhi in this case, has increased the dependence of adoption agencies on donations from adoptive parents. The agencies are supposed to receive substantial budgetary support from the Centre but are not getting it.
If the old system had a dark hole through which babies disappeared as they were handed directly to adoptive parents without official supervision, either with court registration of the adoption or without, the recast network with welfare committees in every district may not be working any better.
There are complaints that the committees act the same way as the older system did, handing over babies directly to adoptive parents, though this is the job of the adoption agencies that maintain a list of hopeful couples. The committees also put babies in temporary foster family care, instead of children’s homes or adoption agencies, till the fit-for-adoption certificate is issued.
An official of the Calcutta committee admitted placing abandoned babies in foster care. “A newborn needs a mother’s lap rather than a children’s home,” she said. At its best, this is the do-gooder guiding spirit — without regard for law or system or the future well-being of the child — in giving babies away for adoption.
A former social welfare official said on condition of anonymity that there were no records of how many children had been placed in foster care by the committees. Nor is there any knowledge if these children are later given away by the foster parents or kept by them.
If babies falling through the system without a clue is the most frightening feature, another is the lack of data beyond basic adoption figures. How many children are brought before each district committee, how many are abandoned, how many surrendered — the system is clueless.
India

Peculiar to state: two roles for one

The big daddy of Adoptions
Peculiar to state: two roles for one
Meet Anil Bhuniya, the father of adoptions in Bengal.
Till last year, when he lost a licence, Bhuniya was lord of most that he surveyed in the adoption world. The lawyer, who says his legal practice is his real work and adoption is social work, controlled two organisations with approval and inspection authority and, allegedly, ran two or more agencies that gave babies away for adoption.
His detractors called it all a one-stop adoption shop.
In the maze that is the adoption network, Bhuniya heads what is known as the adoption coordinating agency (ACA), the only one in Bengal, as its secretary. The ACA is a non-government organisation licensed by the Central Adoption Resource Agency .
Its job is to give clearance for adoption by foreigners.
This leaves the majority of adoption cases that happen within the country out of its purview. But they may require their paperwork to be cleared by a scrutiny agency . Bhuniya was, and still is, the secretary of the scrutiny agency, again the only one in the state.
Powers vested in him as secretary of the two organisations meant that till 2009, virtually no adoptions could take place without his having a hand in it. Through the ACA he had access to details of all the licensed agencies in the state, the number of couples on the waiting list and the number of babies available.
Rinchen Tempo, the principal secretary in the social welfare department, said: "Bhuniya was allowed to get away for so long as there was no alternative."
Bhuniya had generous help from the state. No other state has the same functionary operating an ACA and a scrutiny agency, which is one of the roles of the West Bengal Council for Child Welfare, an NGO where Bhuniya is the secretary. Bhuniya, however, said he was not on the council's scrutiny committee.
They all work out of the same address spread over two floors in a south Calcutta locality .
In 1990, the state government had formed a voluntary co-ordinating agency , the predecessor of the ACA, with which Bhuniya was associated from the start. The same year, the minister of social welfare, Biswanath Chowdhury, issued a circular saying the agency could issue clearances for adoptions within and outside the country, according to Bhuniya.
This was peculiar to Bengal as these agencies in other states have no authority over adoptions within the country.
This made doubly sure that all adoption cases came to Bhuniya.
Well, almost. There is one law, the Juvenile Justice Act of 2000, which makes the roles of Bhuniya's outfits more or less redundant. But parents were generally discouraged from petitioning the courts to legalise adoptions under this law.
A person who once worked closely with Bhuniya said: "He has knowledge of all cases of adoption in court and manipulates them in such a way that cases filed under the Juvenile Justice Act are impeded.
In many cases, the child is not given in adoption by the court."
Bhuniya, however, said: "The Juvenile Justice Act doesn't mention any procedure. It only says adoption is possible. Who is receiving the child and who is giving him away are not mentioned."
The act does mention who can adopt and who can give a child away for adoption. But it is not clear why the government has kept the other, older, communal-sounding law -the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act -in operation after passing the Juvenile Justice Act.
A former social welfare official added: "Bhuniya used to mislead judges with his interpretation of law, especially the judges of the Barasat and Birbhum courts, and force all in-country adoption cases to go through a scrutiny ."
Bhuniya was dismissive about these charges against him. "All such complaints against me are anonymous or pseudonymous. The aim is to remove me from the ACA," he said.
The third, and final, layer of activity Bhuniya was, or still is, allegedly engaged in is running adoption agencies that are authorised to hand over babies to adoptive parents. One, called the Vivekananda Welfare and Development Society, a home for children, was allegedly being run from his house at 18C Kalimuddin Lane, Maniktala, though his name was not among those of the office-bearers.
Bhuniya said: "I didn't have an adoption agency . This society is not involved in adoption work any more."
His name has also been associated with a children's home called Vivekananda Loksiksha Niketan at Faridpur village in East Midnapore but again he cannot be directly linked to it.
Rinchen Tempo said: "A fact-finding team is at work, inquiring into the various allegations against Bhuniya.
Most of them (adoption agencies) are run by him under other names. But till the factfinding team gives its report, nothing can be concluded."
Bhuniya does, however, have an open role as chairman of the Child Welfare Committee, East Midnapore. All children abandoned and surrendered in the district have to be produced before the committee within 24 hours.
If a person has control over the committee, he can send children to the home of his preference.
The authorities have mostly been kind to Bhuniya. In 2004, the central agency wrote saying the same person could not head the voluntary co-ordinating agency, which later became the ACA, and the scrutiny agency and threatened action within 15 days but it was a hollow roar.
Bhuniya asked that if the agency was unhappy with the situation, why did it renew his licence, in 2003 and 2006?
It was only in 2009 that action was taken against him by the Central Adoption Resource Agency when it did not renew his ACA licence on the ground that he had flouted its guidelines by remaining secretary for over two terms, and proposed another ACA.
Lurking in the background was the suspicion that he was also controlling adoption agencies.
Bhuniya went to court, claiming he had not completed two terms and that another ACA could not be formed while his application for renewal was pending. He argued that since his ACA term began to run from 2006 and each term was for three years, there was no case against him. But he had also been heading the voluntary co-ordinating agency (the predecessor of the ACA) for several years.
Calcutta High Court has disposed of the case, instructing the two sides how to resolve the dispute. By October 28, Bhuniya was to reply to the complaints against him forwarded by the social welfare department. The renewal of his licence depends on what the authorities think of his reply.
This means the state is now without an ACA.
Bhuniya's Ramesh Mitra Road office, sprinkled with seven-eight employees, has little work as scrutiny duties have also ebbed with New Delhi insisting on using the Juvenile Justice Act.
Without work, the godfather of adoptions is now an angry godfather.
India
Anil Bhuniya

Babies for sale

Saturday , October 30 , 2010 |

Babies for sale

The Telegraph exposé: Newborn and legal papers, all for Rs 2.5 lakh

CHANDREYEE GHOSE AND SANJOY CHATTOPADHYAYA

A baby can be bought for Rs 2.5 lakh in Calcutta for adoption through an illegal process that in the end yields legal papers, two Telegraph journalists have found.

India

MOTHER SUPERIOR

| Wednesday , October 6 , 2010 |

MOTHER SUPERIOR

The Personal Laws (Amendment) Act, which was passed recently, aims to make the laws on adoption women-friendly. But the new legislation has some crucial loopholes, says Saheli Mitra

Indian women have cause for cheer. Last month the government passed the Personal Laws (Amendment) Act, thereby removing some serious gender discrimination in our legal system when it comes to adopting children.

The act, which essentially amends the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (Hama), 1956, and the Guardians and Wards Act (Gawa), 1890, recognises the mother as the natural guardian of her adopted child, on a par with the father, across all religions. It gives a woman the right to decide whether she wants to adopt a child or whether to give her child for adoption. It also recognises the right of a woman going through a divorce to adopt a child. Earlier, such decisions were the sole preserve of the father.

India

Adoption Act will provide more partner countries

The Irish Times - Saturday, October 30, 2010
Adoption Act will provide more partner countries
Pat and Nora Butler: "Vietnam is going to ratify the Hague Convention next year, so we are hopeful."

Micheál Martin's daughter dies in LondonGlut of housing is laid at door of local authoritiesProtestant women happier with church than Catholics'Grave concerns' expressed for health of deported childReorganisation of chronic illness treatment aims to save 450 livesFour-year plan to be tackled at Monday meetingJAMIE SMYTH, Social Affairs Correspondent

THE GOVERNMENT has moved to ease the concerns of people in the process of adopting children from abroad promising a new adoption regime will provide more partner countries for them to adopt from.

It has also been claimed that the long and stressful assessment process that couples must undergo before they are allowed to adopt children should also speed up under the new regime due to begin onMonday.

Minister for Children Barry Andrews said yesterday the Adoption Act 2010, which enters into force on Monday, would open the doors to a host of new countries for Irish couples hoping to adopt abroad.

By ratifying the Hague Convention on inter-country adoptions, Irish couples could theoretically adopt from 83 countries such as Britain, Mexico and the Philippines, he said.

The Hague Convention safeguards the fundamental rights of children in inter-country adoptions, in both their country of birth and the country of adoption. Further safeguards aim to prevent the abduction, sale and trafficking of children for adoption.

Many couples going through the assessment process with the Health Service Executive are concerned because the Authority will not authorise new Russian adoptions because it has not ratified the Hague Convention.

Russia currently supplies the largest number of adopted children to Irish couples. In 2008, 117 Irish couples adopted a child from Russia and 1,229 have been adopted from Russia since 1991.

Several parents of adopted children from Russia, or who are going through the adoption assessment process, told The Irish Times they fear there could be long delays to new countries coming on stream under the new adoption regime.

“I fear that people who get declarations to adopt after November 1st will face delays as the new adoption system beds down. The structures may take a few years to get into place,” said one parent

Mr Andrews said the Adoption Board had worked very hard to issue “declarations of eligibility and suitability to adopt” to ensure very few people would “get caught out” in the transition period.

Any couple who is provided with a declaration from the board is still allowed to proceed with an adoption from non-Haguecompliant countries such as Russia for a maximum period of three years.

Mr Andrews said the new Adoption Authority, which will be appointed on Monday, would also move very quickly to agree the necessary administrative agreements with Hague compliant states to facilitate adoptions for couples.

“These administrative agreements are different from the type of bilateral agreements we have negotiated between countries to facilitate adoptions. They are far less complex,” said Mr Andrews.

He said he was also willing to travel to Moscow to try to agree a new bilateral adoption agreement with Russia.

Mr Andrews said the Act provided for the appointment of accredited agencies to do assessments that were previously undertaken by the HSE. This would “speed things up” for couples, although it would take a while for the transfer to take place, he said.

Mr Andrews said he acknowledged the pain that the closure of certain countries – Vietnam, Guatemala and Ethiopia – to Irish couples seeking to adopt abroad had caused in the past. He said he was trying to resolve the situation for 20 couples seeking adoptions in Vietnam when all adoptions to Ireland were halted in June 2009.

The Adoption Board will be formally dissolved on Monday and replaced with a new Adoption Authority. Child law expert Geoffrey Shannon will remain on as chairman of the authority. The authority will see the appointment of a psychologist, a social worker and a GP to its board as decreed under the Adoption Act.

COUPLE STUCK IN LIMBO


Pat and Nora Butler have been trying to adopt a child from Vietnam for the past 5½ years. A decision by the Government to suspend adoptions from Vietnam last year has left them, and 19 other Irish couples, stuck in limbo. Here Nora tells their story

I was 38 years old when we started on the adoption process with the authorities. I am 42 years old now, but I still have no family, says Nora Butler.

It is the length of time that it is taking that is the biggest problem, and your age does catch up with you. Our lives have been on hold during this whole stressful adoption process. We kept putting holidays off, thinking that we’d be travelling to Vietnam to pick up our baby. But it just hasn’t happened.

We had an unhappy experience with several IVF programmes, which turned out to be unsuccessful. This took five years, so all-in-all we’ve been trying to start a family for a decade. Time is our biggest enemy, because the likelihood of being allowed to adopt a second child reduces as you get older.

It took about two years before the process properly began after our application. Our social worker started our assessment and we took our pre-adoption course.

The country that you choose to adopt from is a very personal issue for each couple. We undertook research and chose Vietnam because we thought it would be safer, as the guidelines were well established.

Adopting from Vietnam costs about €7,000, while other countries can be much more expensive than that.

We got our “declarations of eligibility and suitability to adopt” after about three years. We then went to Helping Hands Adoption Mediation Agency, which mediates with the Vietnamese government.

However, the bilateral agreement between Ireland and Vietnam lapsed in June 2009. A few months later, a report came out on Vietnamese adoptions, which was negative towards adoptions from abroad.

About 79 Irish couples already had referrals of Vietnamese children and they were able to proceed with the adoptions.

But 20 couples who were still awaiting referrals of children, including us, were not allowed by the Government to proceed due to the findings of the report.

We are just waiting now. The Minister for Children has told us he is trying to get the adoptions through and is awaiting a response from the Vietnamese government.

Our biggest problem is the lack of communication from the Government. We know a lot of people who are finding it very difficult to keep going. It is a very personal issue for the couples involved. We know there isn’t a hope in hell of our adoption going forward this year, but I think next year it will come through for us. Vietnam is going to ratify the Hague Convention next year, so we are hopeful.

Our hearts are set on Vietnam now. If we had switched country we may have had a child by now but we see a good happy culture and a good attitude to Irish people adopting from the country.

Helping Hands, Ireland
Ireland

Arisi Marco Emilio- Direttore della U.O. di Ostetricia e Ginecologia, Ospedale Regionale

Not sure it is the same person

Arisi Marco Emilio

Direttore della U.O. di Ostetricia

e Ginecologia, Ospedale Regionale

“S. Chiara”, Trento

Amici dei Bambini
Marco Arisi

Adoption project a community affair

Published - Thursday, October 28, 2010 
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Adoption project a community affair
By MICHAEL MARTIN | mike.martin@lee.net
A couple years ago when Kelli and Jeff Prodzinski of West Salem decided they wanted to adopt a child, they discovered it was a far costlier proposition than they could comfortably handle on their own — the child they are poised to adopt next month is going to cost them at least $30,000.

“Although we know people who’ve adopted, they’re far wealthier than we are,” Kelli said. 
All four Prodzinkis — from left, Janessa, Kianna, Jeff and Kelly — are hoping to travel to Florida later this month to add a new member to their West Salem family. 
Photo by Michael Martin

On the other hand, the Prodzinskis have always known they were going to add to their family. They have two daughters now. Kianna is 16 and attends Coulee Christian School, while Janessa is 10 and is being home-schooled by Kelli.

While researching adoptions on the Internet, the Prodzinkis came across the idea of fundraising to finance an adoption. “At first, I thought it was ludicrous,” admitted Kelli.

In time, however, she and Jeff, who works in information technology at Mathy Construction, have embraced the process wholeheartedly. They say it’s taught them so much about the goodness of their neighbors, their fellow parishioners at First Free Evangelical Church in Onalaska and many people they’ve never even met.

“I really think that, if I had to do it over again and knew what I know now, if someone just wrote us a check for $30,000, I think I’d turn it down,” Kelli said.

Even so, Kelly confesses the adoption process has been extremely exhausting. There were background checks and fingerprinting, followed by months and months of waiting. Their adoption request was miscoded and adoption officials mistakenly believed they were looking for a girl child (they were open to either gender).

Kelli and Jeff checked with various organizations before forming a connection with a woman with Catholic Charities in La Crosse. From there, they found an agency in Florida called Chosen Child that helps families adopt children that are difficult to place.

“One reason we picked them was that we were told they had a quick turnover — if you adopt a baby from China it can take three or four years,” Jeff said.

They were eventually chosen as a potential adoptive family by an African American woman from Florida who has a due date of Nov. 29. The woman already has a 15-month-old and didn’t think she’d be able to take care of another child. The father, a Haitian, had stated that he had no interest in raising the child.

The fact that their child will have a darker skin color is not an issue. The Prodzinskis have a brother-in-law who is African American and another from Saudi Arabia. “Our family is a real melting pot,” Kelli said.

Their adopted child will have a family with different shades of skin, Jeff added.

After they learned the adoption was in the works, the Prodzinskis raised funds in various ways, including a rummage sale at Coulee Christian this summer that pulled in more than $5,000. There was a very successful fundraiser at Burracho’s restaurant in Onalaska this past Monday and a “barn dance” at Concordia Hall in La Crosse last weekend that drew several hundred people and raised more than $3,000.

“That was fantastic!” Kelli said of the Concordia fundraiser. “And the fundraiser at Burrachos wasn’t even our idea. We stopped in to ask them about donating some gift cards and they suggested it themselves.”

One of the conditions of the adoption is that all the costs be paid 30 days ahead of time. According to Kelli, that will mean the family may have to dip into savings or use credit cards. They will get a large adoption credit on their income tax, but they won’t see that benefit until next spring.

The Prodzinskis emphasized that they have received plenty of support — both financial and spiritual — from their fellow church members at the First Free Church.

“They’ve gone through the blood, sweat and tears just as much as we have,” Kelli said. “They’ve spent countless hours and sleepless nights, but they’ll come up to us and say ‘Thank you for letting us be a part of this.’ They also say, ‘We are blessed to help you do something that is bigger than ourselves.’”

Their could well be more stress ahead, since a mother always has the option to change her mind at the last moment. Kelli and Jeff have come to terms with that possibility and plan to be there at the time of birth anyway.

They plan on booking airline tickets and considering that the due date is right around Thanksgiving and they won’t know ahead of time the exact date, that is going to be another expensive proposition.

“They’re going to call us when she goes into labor,” Kelli said. “All four of us are going to go down — it’s a family thing. If it doesn’t work out, then we’ll all grieve together. She (the birth mother) did send us a picture of her son, so that is a good sign, but you just never know.”

Asked whether all the paperwork, waiting, stress and uncertainty has been worth it, the Prodzinskis had a one-word answer: “Absolutely!”

They both talk about how the community response has reinforced their faith in human nature. Jeff recalled a moment during the rummage sale at Coulee Christian when it began to rain (sale items were displayed in the parking lot): “Everyone rushed to pick things up and help us get them inside, even though they didn’t have to do that. You realize that people genuinely want to do good.”

Kelli said that she’d been contacted by two women she had never met before. Both had lost their babies during childbirth. “They said ‘We just wanted you to have these items,’” she recalled.

“We’re going to make a scrapbook for the baby some day so he or she can see how the whole community was behind this,” Jeff said.

“We’d also like to inspire other to know this is doable,” Kelli said. She said she’s already been approached by people wanting to know how to do what the Prodzinskis have done.

“There’s one other thing,” Kelli said. “We’re hoping and praying we’ll be able to somehow minister and help the birth mother. We don’t know yet how we’ll be able to do that, but we hope to find a way.”
A Chosen Child

Latvia: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children,

67. The Special Rapporteur received information from the Ministry for Children and Family

Affairs regarding efforts undertaken to decrease the number of children in childcare institutions

and, overall, to decrease the number of institutions. She was informed of promising policies

3

A/HRC/12/23/Add.1

page 16

undertaken to promote adoption and foster care, in particular favouring national over foreign

adoptions since 2004. The number of foreign adoptions used to be three to four times more than

national adoptions, whereas today, the number of national adoptions is almost double the number

of foreign adoptions. The Government reported that at 31 December 2008, 1,351 adoptable

children were registered in the database and 479 of them were already living in a family,

leaving 872 (64.5 per cent) for whom adoptive families had to be found. In 2008, 73 children

were taken into pre-adoption care in national adopters’ families, which was 15 more than in

2007. Of the remaining adoptable children, the Government reported that 484 of them had a

disability or serious health problem. The Special Rapporteur encourages the Government to

pursue measures to encourage the adoption of children in these two categories, including

psychological and financial support to adoptive families, medical and psychological follow-up

and support of those children, as well as awareness-raising campaigns. In 2008, 83 foreign

adopters were granted permission to adopt children from Latvia, 31 less than in 2007. The

Minister reported that as of 2003, several legislative acts were passed in implementation of the

1993 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of

Intercountry Adoption. The Minister added that procedures binding Orphans’ Courts’ decisions

regarding adoptions are now more clearly prescribed.

CRC/C/LVA/CO/2, para. 10.
Latvia

Estonia - Report of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children

48. The following chart tracks the number of adopted children in Estonia between 2003

and 2008:

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Adopted children 130 165 152 158 142 181

49. International adoptions of Estonian children are permitted only to the United States,

Finland and Sweden. The Special Rapporteur was informed that approximately 20 children a

year are adopted from Estonia by people in foreign countries. The consent of the Ministry of

Social Affairs is required for international adoptions.

50. The Special Rapporteur notes the efforts made by the Government to regulate national and

international adoptions, but reiterates the need to ensure the prevention of illegal adoptions as

well as to guarantee the best interests of the child. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur

encourages the Government of Estonia to have in place adequate review procedures of all

adoption decisions, as well as follow-up procedures once a child has been placed with an

adoptive family. The Special Rapporteur is encouraged by information provided that the

Ministry of Social Affairs, in cooperation with child protection officers, NGO representatives

and a court, have presented proposals for inclusion in the draft Family Law Act with regard to

adoptions.

Estonia

It may soon be curtains for babies’ day out at Preet Mandir


 Pune  Page One Tuesday , June 27, 2006 


It may soon be curtains for babies’ day out at Preet Mandir

Child & Welfare Dept seeks Centre’s nod to clip agency’s global wings

Sunanda Mehta

Pune, June 26 FOLLOWING the recent controversy over alleged malpractices by the city-based adoption agency, Preet Mandir, the State government has sought the Centre’s permission to cancel the inter-country adoption licence. For Preet Mandir’s head J S Bhasin, who not too long ago attributed Pune’s emergence as an important centre for adoption in the country — ‘‘...this is the mandi, the market for babies’’ — this has come as a rude shock.

Now, The Commissioner of Women and Child Welfare Department has initiated a detailed inquiry into the working of Preet Mandir and has recommended the State government to cancel Preet Mandir’s inter-country adoption licence. This licence allows the agency to put children up for adoption to foreign nationals — a route that is allegedly used by adoption agencies to make easy money.



‘‘The State government has forwarded the request (of cancelling the inter-country licence) to the Central government and we are waiting for orders from them,’’ Women and Child Welfare commissioner Ashwini Kumar told Pune Newsline.

In fact, the Adoptive Coordinating Agency (ACA) has brought to the notice of the commissioner as well as the New Delhi-based Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) allegations about Preet Mandir’s unfair adoption practices. One of the complaints against Preet Mandir is that it discourages Indian parents from adoptions so that they can go in more for foreign adoptions, Nishita Shah, chairperson of ACA that clears all adoptions in the city, said.

As per the government rules, a child can be put up for adoption to foreign parents only if at least three Indian parents refuse that child. The rules also state that Indian parents should account for at least 50 per cent of all adoptions from a centre. As per the statistics with ACA, for the financial year 2005-06, Preet Mandir put up 100 children for foreign adoptions as against 62 for Indians.

However, Bhasin dismisses these statistics as misleading. ‘‘Sixty-six per cent of children were put up for Indian parents (including NRIs in 2005-06) and only 33 per cent for foreigners,’’ he said.

Shah said Preet Mandir came in for discussion at almost every meeting of ACA. ‘‘There have been many complaints about the agency charging exorbitant amounts from foreigners and we have brought it to the notice of the commissioner and CARA,’’ she said.

Commissioner Kumar admitted that they have received complaints of Preet Mandir’s alleged malpractices and said they were also inquiring into the allegation of child trafficking. ‘‘Though nothing has come to light as yet to support the allegation, if child trafficking is on then it is a very serious issue,’’ he said.

Preet Mandir has three adoption centres — two in Pune and one in Aurangabad — and is one of the largest adoption agencies in the State where people from all parts of the country and world come for adoption. Bhasin has an explanation for that too. ‘‘We do not refuse a child to anybody. We understand everyone’s requirements and make sure they get the child they want,’’ he had told this paper a few weeks ago.

On Monday, Bhasin again reiterated that the charges were all baseless and misleading and said they would respond to CARA that has issued a show-cause notice to it.





Preet Mandir, ACT CASE Preet Mandir
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