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Wariness and uncertainty as Haiti adoptions resume

By DAVID CRARY - AP National Writer

Officially, Haiti's international adoption process is back in business.

Yet U.S. adoption agencies remain wary and uncertain, while families may face years of limbo as they seek to adopt children orphaned by the January earthquake. Some had been to Haiti and met children before the quake, others eagerly started from scratch afterward.

October 10, 2007

Mary Bonn Sentenced

After eight months since her arrest and the various firestorms that have followed it, the Mary Bonn saga comes to an end. In a long sentencing hearing that went on for hours, she was sentenced to 366 days in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, and fines and restitution of $10,000. The court was filled with Mary's supporters, families who had happlily adopted through her. And the adoptive father in the case she was charged for appeared before the judge as well. We'll get more info on what happened, the judges comments, etc. soon.

Click on more for updates Oct 10

While this may be the end of the saga for Mary, she will have a legacy full of disparate thoughts. She helped create hundreds of families successfully. There are many who sing her praises based on their experience working with her. There are also many who have broken hearts from their experience, some still struggling today to get out of the mess of adoptions started throgh Mary. There are those, like the family in this case, whose description to their kids of how they came to join their family is not as simple as the one I'll tell mine.

Pflegeeltern - wer, wie, was

Geld darf nicht im Vordergrund stehen

Wer kann ein Pflegekind bei sich aufnehmen?

Pflegeeltern müssen körperlich und seelisch belastbar sein, das Alter der Pflegeeltern und das des Kindes sollte dem natürlichen Altersabstand zwischen Eltern und Kindern entsprechen. Wer ein Pflegekind aufnimmt, muss über ausreichend Wohnraum verfügen und materiell so abgesichert sein, dass er nicht auf das Pflegegeld zur Absicherung des eigenen Lebensunterhaltes angewiesen ist. Wer sich in der Bereitschaftspflege engagieren will, braucht viel Erfahrung in Erziehungsfragen. Eine pädagogische Ausbildung kann von Vorteil sein.

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Focussing on children in need of care and protection

Staff Reporter

The handbook is useful for people working in the area of child rights

BANGALORE: There is still a long way to go for all children in India to dream of living a healthy, happy childhood free from abuse and exploitation. The protection and promotion of child rights in India vis-À-vis the juvenile justice system is an issue that needs to be addressed with much seriousness and concern.

“Justice for Children,” – a Handbook on Implementing The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000 and the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act 2006, is an attempt to guide the statutory body under the Juvenile justice system, the child welfare committees while dealing with the web of legal maze of procedural and substantive laws.

Adoption racket? Karnataka hospitals 'selling' babies

Seethalakshmi S, TNN, May 17, 2010, 02.38am IST

 

BANGALORE: Couples waiting for adoption have now found an easier route to get their bundle of joy. They book their request with a hospital which, in turn, happily sells an abandoned child for a price.

The Karnataka Child Protection Commission has been receiving some complaints about hospitals illegally selling children for adoption, while the Adoption Coordination Agency (ACA) has stopped getting children from hospitals.

The agency, which is the official body for finally placing children for adoption, has asked the government to book hospitals for trafficking if children are given away without following procedures and legalities as per the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956.

"Not just that, families/parents who take children directly from hospitals can be booked for kidnapping. Even if it is family adoption, it must be cleared by the Child Welfare Committees. Every rule must be followed," says ACA chairperson Aloma Lobo.

KCPC chairperson Nina Nayak has written to the health and women and child welfare departments to ensure that hospitals compulsorily surrender abandoned children to adoption agencies. "We have been receiving complaints about nursing homes and hospitals involved in illegally handing over new-born babies of unwed mothers to couples wanting to adopt children."

A nursing home in Hanumanthnagar is said to have demanded Rs 20,000 from a registered agency to hand over an abandoned baby. Shockingly, when the agency visited the hospital, the child was missing and the hospital said it didn't have any child.

Again, last month, a hi-tech hospital in Udupi had kept 19 children for over a year. A week after they were questioned, all children had left the hospital. On investigation, the commission found that one of the hospital authorities had floated an NGO to place the children up for adoption. "During inquiry, they confessed that mothers who preferred not to take low-weight birth children or children born out of wedlock often sold them to the hospital for huge sums of money," says Nina Nayak.

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Nina Nayak to head child rights panel

Special Correspondent

Bangalore: The long-pending proposal to constitute the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has come to fruition with the Karnataka Government appointing well-known child rights activist Nina Nayak as its chairperson.

Ms. Nina Nayak is a former chairperson of the Child Welfare Committee in Bangalore, vice-president of the Indian Council for Child Welfare, and a member of the sub-committee on children in the Planning Commission.

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Case against Pune-based NGO official for child trafficking

Press Trust Of India

New Delhi, May 17, 2010

First Published: 20:11 IST(17/5/2010)

Last Updated: 20:14 IST(17/5/2010)

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/08/09/2003450714

Criminal Investigation Bureau busts smugglers

STAFF WRITER
Sunday, Aug 09, 2009, Page 3

The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) yesterday said it had broken up a human-trafficking ring that used the passports of Taiwanese Aboriginal children to smuggle Chinese minors into France.

In June, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) made a similar breakthrough involving another group that used the same method to traffic Chinese youths to the US.

The CIB yesterday said it received a tip that a man surnamed Liao (?) and the criminal group he headed had successfully smuggled Chinese minors to the US several times.

After the US strengthened its visa application policy last month by requiring that all persons under the age of 14 go to the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) for a face-to-face visa interview, the group shifted its operations to France, the bureau said.

The CIB said the traffickers would pay anywhere between NT$5,000 to NT$10,000 for the personal information of Aboriginal children in Hualien and would then use the documents to apply for authentic Republic of China (ROC) passports and foreign visas.

Currently, the Bureau of Consular Affairs does not require people to apply for a passport in person.

After obtaining an ROC passport and a visa to a third country, the traffickers would bring the travel documents to Hong Kong to meet up with Chinese counterparts who brought minors from China. Together, the children and their escorts would fly to either the US, France, Mexico or other countries from Hong Kong using the passports.

The CIB said the crime syndicates had bought the personal information of 45 Aboriginal children and trafficked 37 Chinese minors to the US and other countries.

The crime ring earns US$70,000 for each child it smuggles. The CIB estimated that Liao’s group had made a profit of more than NT$80 million (US$2.4 million).

Together with Hualien police, the CIB arrested members of the group at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Thursday. Police also found the members had a large quantity of fraudulent passports and counterfeit NIA immigration custom stamps.

The 2009 annual Trafficking in Persons report published in June by the US Department of Homeland Security said that Taiwan remained a Tier 2 country.

Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan all received the same ranking, while China has stayed on the Tier 2 watch list for five years running.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/06/20/2003446656

AIT requires face-to-face interviews for kids’ US visas

By Jenny W. hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jun 20, 2009, Page 2

Starting on July 1, Taiwanese passport holders under the age of 14 will require a face-to-face interview with a US immigration officer when applying for a US visa, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said.