Odyssey of a gesture of love.

Goodmorning everyone.

I am the lucky father of a child adopted now over two years ago. I'm not going to tell you about the first. Ours was a difficult adoption that lasted three years, during which emotions often took over, but in the end we managed to adopt this child from Romania.

We see Francesco for the first time on a photocopy of a photo sent by fax, one day in April 2000 at the Rome office of the Association we had contacted.

Francesco, they say, is the child highlighted by the cross, because he is photographed together with a companion, and he has a balloon in his hand.

Mr. Pieter Woltjo Bult was appointed as the UNICEF Representative for Romania in July 2017 at a time when UNICEF and Romania were developing their new partnership for children for 2018-2022. The objective of this partnership is to support the progressive realization of child rights and the reduction of equity gaps affecting children and their families in Romania and beyond by developing quality, universal, community-based, child and family-centered services and transforming social norms related to discrimination and violence against children. Furthermore, UNICEF and the Government of Romania are committed to identifying and sharing best practices in advancing children’s rights at the regional and global level.

Mr. Bult has been working for children as an international civil servant for more than 20 years. He has extensive experience around the world, working in humanitarian contexts as well as at UNICEF Headquarters.

Between 2011 and 2017, he served as the UNICEF Senior Advisor for the Public Partnership Division at the New York Headquarters where he led a team dealing with Europe and Central Asia on collaboration with governments including some of UNICEF’s biggest donors. Previously, he worked as Deputy Country Director of Programmes for UNDP in India, supporting the design and management of the UNDP - Government of India Country Programme, focusing on poverty reduction, social protection and climate change. Between 2006 and 2007, Pieter headed the UN Tsunami Recovery Programme in India, in charge of coordinating and directing seven UN agencies in response to the Tsunami in India. Earlier, he was the UNICEF Learning Officer for the Organizational Learning and Development section in the Division of Human Resources based at New York Headquarters.

Between 1996 and 2001, Mr. Bult developed programming and managed emergency response to the food crisis in Indonesia and child protection and education crisis in the State of Palestine. He started his career as UNICEF Assistant Programme Officer in Suriname where he designed and managed the first UNICEF Country Programme in the country.

Mr. Bult has a Master’s degree in Human Geography of Developing Countries from the Catholic University of Nijmegen and a Bachelor’s Degree in Education from the School for Higher Professional Education, Netherlands.

Four more suspects have been arraigned over a child trafficking syndicate at Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital in Nairobi following an expose that revealed the underworld of baby-selling activities within Kenya’s capital.

The police had vowed to hunt down the syndicate, whose undertakings involved selling babies in the pretext of helping individuals not willing to go through a formal adoption process.

According to the police, the criminals targeted public hospitals and children's homes within Nairobi in the trade.

On Thursday, Dr Musa Mohammed Ramadhan, Beatrice Njambi Njoroge, Selina Awour Adundo and Juliana Mbete Kimwele appeared in court to answer to the charges of child trafficking crime.

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Rolson Price still scans Facebook for her picture. He’s seen her occasionally, at the periphery of someone else’s photo, instantly recognisable.

But he’s never met her, and concedes he never will.

He still doesn’t know his daughter’s name.

Price is one of dozens of victims of an extraordinary and brazen human trafficking ring, operating for years across the Marshall Islands archipelago and three states of the United States of America. The scheme involved pregnant Marshallese women being lured to the United States and enticed, with offers of $10,000 and the promise of a new life in America, to give up their babies, which were then adopted out to US couples willing to pay four times that amount for a child.

Paul Petersen, a 45-year-old former elected county official in Arizona, pleaded guilty to human smuggling, conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens, and fraud in a US federal court. He has been sentenced to six years in prison, and faces further jail time still on more charges.

Survivors adopted from mother and baby homes have said many of them left without their births being registered and some with the signatures on their adoption papers being forged.

Others only became aware of the fact as adults that they had been the subject of secret vaccine trials while babies in the facilities in Cork and Tipperary.

The revelation came as Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, remained the major focus of revelations about the appalling treatment of young women and their babies.

With Tuam in Galway and Bessborough in Cork, Sean Ross Abbey ranked among the most notorious of Ireland’s mother and baby homes.

Sean Ross Abbey was also at the centre of the story of Philomena Lee whose campaign to trace her son – sent to the US for adoption in the 1950s – was the basis of a BAFTA-winning film.

Following a similar investigation, the Netherlands recently suspended all foreign adoptions.

Falsification of documents, lost files, victims of child trafficking: a group of people adopted abroad and adoptive parents is asking the French government for an investigation to shed light on "illegal practices" observed during international adoptions.

"We, adopted people and French adoptive parents, ask the government and parliamentarians to set up a commission of inquiry so that illegal practices in international adoption since the 1970s are noted", write the members of this recent collective for the Recognition of illicit adoptions in France (Raif) in a petition addressed to the National Assembly and published on the Change.org site.

Mali, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, Peru: illegal adoptions? Stolen children?

In recent years, several children adopted in France, now adults, have testified in books or in the media of difficulties in accessing their origins, even of fraudulent procedures during their adoption.

Service Social International

Brussels Social Action Service - SASB Asbl

The SASB, Belgian branch of the ISS is called upon in personal or family situations requiring coordinated intervention between two or more countries. The service can be challenged either by courts, social services/lawyers or individuals. When the request comes from abroad it is transmitted via the SSI network .

source : http://www.iss-ssi.org

The service carries out, sometimes in partnership, social studies whose purpose is to obtain a social report.

From: CHARLOTTE WEATHERSBY

Date: 5/13/2006 5:26:59 AM

To: Romania_Adoption@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Romania_Adoption] Vali Nash a clever swindler, impostor doing business with adoption

I believe it. I have a child that was originally adopted from Romania by two pedophiles. They got scared and relinquished him. Because he was diagnosed with CP they thought he was too stupid to tell. To make a long story short he has a high IQ is doing well now and will testify upon turning 18. I am glad that adoption is shut down right now. We have to find a way to keep these children safe even in their own countries though and that it what I am brainstorming about.

Nederlandse 'non' die verdacht werd van babyroof uit Chili lijkt dossiers te hebben vernietigd

De zoektocht van Chileense geadopteerden naar hun biologische familie dreigt een onmogelijke missie te worden. Bijna alle dossiers zijn spoorloos of mogelijk vernietigd. De vrouw die veel adopties regelde, weigerde tot haar overlijden in januari informatie te geven.

Tonny van der Mee 23-06-23, 07:30 Laatste update: 23-06-23, 08:14

Ruim tweehonderd Chileense kinderen zijn sinds begin jaren 70 in Nederland (illegaal) geadopteerd. De Nederlandse Truus Kuijpers, die ruim 25 jaar kindertehuis Las Palmas in Santiago runde, was betrokken bij zo’n honderd adopties.

Geadopteerden beschuldigen haar van kinderroof. Ze zou onder meer baby's zonder medeweten en toestemming van de moeders uit ziekenhuizen hebben meegenomen naar Las Palmas voor adoptie. Ze is in 2019 verhoord door justitie in Chili, die onderzoek doet naar de illegale adopties van 20.000 kinderen in de jaren 70 en 80.

Recognising that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding” - Preamble of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).