ANNEXE I : Reconnaissance légale, politique ou pratique du droit d’accès aux origines et conditions d’exercice de ce droit (Questions 1 et 2 de la Circulaire)

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In a highly unusual ruling, a state court judge on Thursday voided a U.S. Marine’s adoption of an Afghan war orphan, more than a year after he took the little girl away from the Afghan couple raising her. But her future remains uncertain.

For now, the child will stay with Marine Maj. Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, under a temporary custody order they obtained before the adoption. The Masts will have to re-prove to the court that they should be granted a permanent adoption.

Despite the uncertainty, the ruling was a welcome move for the Afghan couple, who had been identified by the Afghan government as the child's relatives in February 2020 and raised her for 18 months. They dropped to their knees in prayer outside the courthouse. As they held each other, the young man wiped the tears from both their eyes with his wife’s headscarf.

The Masts quickly left the courthouse after Thursday's hearing, flanked by their attorneys. The parties are forbidden from commenting by a gag order.

The dispute raised alarms at the highest levels of government, from the White House to the Taliban, after an Associated Press investigation in October revealed how Mast became determined to rescue the baby and bring her home as an act of Christian faith. But until now, the adoption order has remained in place.

Indian Council of Historical Research is looking to release records of people’s ancestors kept by genealogy priests in religious destinations; it plans to help make these records available to researchers, scholars, historians to explore stories of famines, epidemics and migrations in the past

Kapil Parasher’s 10x10 foot office room near Kusha ghat in Haridwar is lined with steel almirahs weighed down with rolls of leather-bound record books. He opens a cupboard, its glass frontage showing the many piles stacked within, and takes out a ledger. On the floor, sits a middle-aged couple waiting to find out about their ancestors. The 40-year-old Mr. Parasher, who wears a dhoti-kurta, opens the bahi (book), and leafs through what could be hundreds of pages.

In a sonorous voice, he declares that they belong to the Kahloor Riyasat, the royal family of Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh. The couple are pleasantly surprised, and the session takes barely 10 minutes.

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In the pantheon of stories of disappearances, the story of Izabel Lopez Raymundo is that of a collateral victim.

It was June 13, 1982, when the military regime of Efrain Rios Mont surrounded the village of Nebaj, where she lived in Guatemala. The military enforced a scorched earth policy and destroyed everything they saw. They set houses on fire, shot a man who was protesting the fires in front of his house; the son stood in front of his family to protect them and was also shot. The mother was taken to the back of the house with a baby on her back and was shot at close range. The bullet killed the mother, but lodged in the baby's body. A soldier took the baby, under the guise of saving him, and placed him in an orphanage. The baby was then adopted and transferred to Belgium, where he grew up.

The baby, now an adult, is called Lopez. She has a scar on her chest where the bullet entered, "as if to say never forget", Ms Lopez said. It was this scar that allowed his family who stayed behind to identify him.

Ms. Lopez told her story during the recent session of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED). The Committee regularly hears or reads testimonies from families and other survivors of enforced disappearances.

“I testify today in tribute to my family, who were massacred in cold blood, and also in tribute to the victims of war who were made to disappear,” said Ms. Lopez. “These families who have to rebuild themselves and live with the physical and psychological pain caused by the massacres but also the disappearance of their loved ones. I testify in the hope that things will change and that this will not happen again. »

The Constitutional Court has ruled in a new judgment that it should still be possible for prospective parents to have their child recognized when they appeal to a married surrogate mother. This was not possible until now due to a provision in the Old Civil Code.

The concrete case revolves around a gay couple who wanted to have a child together. They appealed to a surrogate mother, the sister of one of the men, for their wish to have children. The other man of the couple donated sperm cells, and is therefore the biological father of the child. The eggs came from an anonymous donor.

After the birth of the child, the biological father also wanted to legally recognize his paternity. He filed a claim for this with the court of first instance in Liège, but that court encountered a problem.

Presumption of paternity

There is such a thing as the presumption of paternity: when a married mother gives birth to a child, her husband is legally the father. That presumption of paternity can be contested, for example by the person claiming to be the biological father.

Chief Justice says inertia with regard to legislating area of surrogacy ‘not a viable option even in the near term’

There is no existing public policy barrier to recognising a Northern Irish man’s overseas stepparent adoption of his husband’s genetic twins born through a commercial surrogacy arrangement, the Supreme Court has ruled.

A woman donated an egg, while another woman in the US carried and gave birth to the children pursuant to a lawful commercial arrangement that agreed the couple were the intended parents.

On Thursday, the seven judges unanimously held that, even though aspects of the gestational carrier agreement would or could prove unenforceable in this State on public policy grounds, this would not necessarily dictate that children born under such agreements should not be recognised here.

There were also no issues of enforceability arising from the fact the birth mother’s consent to the adoption was given prior to the births, they ruled. Significantly, the surrogate mother reiterated long after the birth of the children her consent to surrender all parental rights, the court said.

During the committee debate that took place in the House of Representatives last week, Minister for Legal Protection Franc Weerwind said that he wanted to 'ideally reduce the number of intercountry adoptions to zero'. Despite pressure from the COC, prospective adoptive parents and several MPs, he also insisted on phasing out intercountry adoptions from the US. Although Defense for Children believes that intercountry adoption should end as soon as possible, we are pleased that the minister spoke out loud and clear during the debate and emphatically put the best interests of the child (and no other interests) first.

US adoptions

The minister agrees with the Central Authority that the adoption relationship with the US should be terminated. He emphasizes the strict application of the principle of subsidiarity from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Adoption Convention. The core of this principle is that it is in the best interests of the child to be cared for and raised as much as possible in its own country and culture. This means, says the minister, that a child is only eligible for intercountry adoption if the country of origin does not see any possibilities to safely take the child in itself.

The US, which has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, has a different adoption system and also interprets the principle of subsidiarity differently. There is no question of a last resort: the US has ample opportunities to safely care for children itself. This is evident from, among other things, the country analysis. The US has long waiting lists for prospective adoptive parents and young children are the most sought after domestically. That is why the country is adopting (more) children from abroad. At the same time, the US is giving (fewer) children, especially babies, up for adoption. This cannot be reconciled with the principle of subsidiarity and the difference in interpretation is, as the minister rightly points out, unbridgeable. In addition, according to international publications, abuses have been reported in the American adoption system.

Adoptions from Portugal and Bulgaria

On Thursday, the Danish Korean Rights Group and the 35-year-old Mia Lee from Ringsted questioned the Danish Appeals Board's investigations into adoption cases from South Korea and are now calling on the Danish Parliament to initiate an impartial investigation.

In Mia Lee's official adoption documents, she has written false from almost every line.

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Italian parties are divided on same-sex couples adopting children as the decision to ban the automatic registration of same-sex couple’s children in the civil registry has polarised the debate, with the Italian Left standing firm in support of civil rights.

Milan Mayor Beppe Sala (Democratic Party-PD/S&D) has denounced legislative gaps on the issue and called for a same-sex marriage law to simplify the adoption process for same-sex couples.

There is a need for a “very broad axis” between leftist parties to achieve greater protections for same-sex couples and their children, Sala said Wednesday at an event on the issue that the Greens organised at the European Parliament.

The event was attended by Greens co-chair Therry Reintke, PD (S&D) European Parliament delegation leader in the European Parliament Brando Benifei and Henriette Catharina Rinzema (Renew).

PD’s lower House group leader Chiara Braga announced that the party is ready to participate in this “battle of civilisation”.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to entertain the batch of petitions filed by

Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay seeking gender neutral and religion neutral legislations

in matters governing divorce, adoption, guardianship, succession/inheritance, and

maintenance across the country. The bench comprising CJI DY Chandrachud, Justice

PS Narasimha, and Justice JB Pardiwala held that the...