Hello, I’m attorney Kim Sun-hugh. I would like to share some insights and experiences from working with overseas adoptees during their visits to their agencies, the National Center for the Rights of the Child (NCRC), and the police. I cannot say that having an attorney present during these visits will dramatically affect the outcome, nor can I say whether having such legal assistance is always necessary. 

The Ministry of Social Affairs has decided to close Danadopt's adoptions of children from Ethiopia because there are doubts about whether the agency's mediation of adoptions from the African country is ethically and legally sound.

The Ministry of Social Affairs is now closing down adoption agency DanAdopt's adoptions of children from Ethiopia, DR News has learned.

In addition, DanAdopt must also account for the adoption process in all other countries from which they adopt children.

The other adoption agency in Denmark, AC Børnehjælp, must also account for their adoptions of children from Ethiopia. However, they are still allowed to continue their adoptions from Ethiopia until their account has been assessed by the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Lige nu er det stort umuligt for barnløse danskere at adoptere børn fra udlandet, fordi skandaler på adoptionsområdet har sat al aktivitet på pause.

Og det er blevet vanskeligere at forestille sig, at barnløse danskere igen kan komme på venteliste til at adoptere børn fra udlandet. Sådan lød det fredag fra flere af partierne i Folketinget.

Flere partier overvejer nu, om det er tid til at opgive tanken om international adoption endegyldigt. Et af dem er Liberal Alliance, som har meget lidt tiltro til, at adoption fra udlandet kan genoptages på en forsvarlig måde.

Berhampur: A three-month-old baby girl found her home after a Koraput-based couple legally adopted her, two months after being surrendered by her unwed mother in Gajapati district's R.Udayagiri block. 

In a brief ceremony held at Paralakhemundi on Wednesday, Gajapati collector Bijay Chandra Dash officially handed over the infant to the couple, following the Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA) guidelines. The couple, who run a business in Kolkata, had waited nearly three years for this moment after registering with CARA, an autonomous statutory body under the ministry of women and child welfare. 

"The baby was surrendered to the district administration when she was just 20 days old, as her unwed mother was unable to care for her," said district child protection officer (DCPO) Arun Kumar Tripathy, who was present at the ceremony along with officials from the child care home where the infant had been provided shelter. 

New podcast series from DR Dokumentar reveals that Danish adoption agency was involved in bribery and child trafficking in the 1980s.

In March 1983, the Danish adoption agency AC Børnehjælp received a typewritten letter from one of the agency's employees in Lebanon. It was a Danish woman whose job was to help the agency find children for adoption.

The letter stated that she had been put in touch with a Lebanese midwife who could provide children.

- Apparently she can give us the children we want, but the price is 21-25,000 DKK (the currency of the time, ed.). Nobody gets anything for free in Lebanon. Take it or leave it (...) I'm standing in line with people who are willing to pay any amount for the child.

The story of how Anna came to Denmark

Iresha and Inoka Knops, two sisters who were adopted from Sri Lanka in 1985 by Ine and Ed Knops, are committed to the future of their birth village. The ladies grew up in the Netherlands, but discovered by chance last year that their biological mother, a sister, four half-brothers and a half-sister are still alive. What started as an emotional reunion, resulted in a mission to help the community in their birth village.
 

The discovery of their biological mother came unexpectedly during a holiday of Iresha. "It was very special, emotional and very beautiful," the sisters say. Although they never planned to visit their biological family, the meeting brought peace. "It is nice to know that our adoption went well and that our biological mother supported it."

From support to action

During their visit, Iresha and Inoka were confronted with the poverty in their home village. Although they support their biological mother financially, they wanted to do more for their family and the rest of the community. “We didn’t just want to give money, but to ensure that people can develop and build a better future,” Iresha explains. The idea arose to set up a community college, with which they want to invest in education and development together with the Dutch Sampath Foundation.

A warm childhood in Sevenum

ROMFILATELIA SUPPORTS SERA ROMANIA FOUNDATION THROUGH A POSTAL STATIONERY FOR A NOBLE CAUSE – “EVERY CHILD DESERVES A FAMILY!”

On Monday, October 24th, 2016, the Romanian Athenaeum hosted the anniversary event 20 years of activity SERA Romania Foundation, which marked two working decades of this nongovernmental institution, serving to protect the children in need.

The event included a series of moments which guaranteed an exceptional evening, based on a noble cause “Every child deserves a family”: the anniversary charity symphonic music concert, having the famous American pianist Alan Gampel as special guest, the photo exhibition dedicated to the work of the foundation, the philatelic moment of presenting the dedicated postal stationery and a cocktail which ended the evening successfully.

The host of the evening, Mr. Bogdan Simion, Executive Director of SERA Romania Foundation, had several special guests: Mr. Dragos Pislaru, Minister of Labour, Family and Social Protection for the Elderly, Ms. Arielle de Rothschild, President of the Board of Directors of the CARE France Foundation, Ms. Michele Ramniceanu, Board Member of the CARE France Foundation, members of the Chamber of Deputies, of the Diplomatic Corps, including H.E. Ms. Tamar Samash, the Israeli Ambassador to Bucharest. There were also representatives of the General Directorates for Social Assistance and Child Protection, guests from the business environment, as well as institutional partners of the foundation.

In order to support the activity of the Foundation, as well as celebrating its anniversary of 20 years of existence, Romfilatelia joined the festive moment by designing a postal stationery with a fixed stamp, wishing to be a loud voice for those causes that deserve to be heard.

Adoption from abroad is increasingly being questioned. The research program Zembla recently paid attention to corruption in adoptions from Sri Lanka, and on television in April was the Dutch documentary drama 'Exportbaby', about corruption in adoptions from Uganda. Last year, the Council for Criminal Justice Application and Youth Protection advised to ban adoption from abroad.

One of the first to uncover corruption scandals was Roelie Post, an official at the European Commission in Brussels. In the late nineties she worked for the EC on the issue of children's rights in Romania. They had to be resolved before Romania's accession to the EU was possible.

Post was faced with opposition and threats that are so serious that she is now living in hiding in a village in the north of the Netherlands and that she has a long-standing conflict with her employer, the EC. It does not recognize her as a whistleblower and threatens with punitive measures.

Roelie Post tells her story in Argos.

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When they closed the Romanian “baby shops”

“There have been moments when we took more into account the interests of the parents then those of the children”

“The Irene Foundation, the Romanian associate of the Spanish agency ADECOP, was the best in manoeuvering bribery”

“As the US managed to get exceptions to the moratorium on international adoptions in Romania, we wanted an equitable treatment”