Mysuru: The state govt's adoption initiative helped 33 children from the Chamarajanagar adoption centre find loving homes between 2018 and Oct 2024.
Among the adopted, 15 children were adopted by families within the state, 13 by couples from other states and five were taken in by families abroad, including five physically challenged.
The govt-introduced adoption scheme appeared as a boon not only for childless couples, but also for orphaned, abandoned, surrendered and destitute children to find families. Of the 33 children adopted, 21 were girls and 12 were boys.
According to the Chamarajanagar District Child Protection Committee, 28 children were surrendered by their parents unable to take care of them due to poverty, health and other reasons. All the children adopted by parents are below two years old.
Most of these adopted children were rescued by the District Child Protection Committee, when newborn girls and boys were abandoned by their mothers in dustbins, bus stands, temple premises, markets and other crowded places fearing social stigma, poverty, and other reasons.
Officials in the women and children welfare department attributed child marriage as one of the main reasons for abandoning children in hospitals and other places after giving birth, fearing legal problems, social stigma and other issues. The department also rescued several children found orphaned after the death of their parents.
Speaking to TOI, Chamarajanagar District Child Protection officer Cheluvaraju said that once these children were rescued, the state govt not only took care of their health but also looked after their upbringing and education with the help of non-govt organisations like Jeevan Jyothi Trust of Kollegal, which runs an orphanage exclusively for such children and takes care of rescued abandoned children. It also facilitates childless couples to adopt children under the adoption scheme.
As per the Adoption Scheme 2022 Act, childless couples who want to adopt children rescued by the child welfare department must register their names through an online portal launched by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA). The couple must be economically, mentally, and physically sound. They must play a crucial role in the well-being of the adopted child and must take care of the future of the child.
Once they apply online, a team from the department inspects the house of the applicant to verify their economic and social status, study their background and will submit the report to the respective deputy commissioner, who is also chairman of the district adoption resource authority, for approval. The department will keep the names of the couple secret after adopting children under the scheme. The department will also keep a tab on adopted children's parents for two years to verify they are taking care of the child.
Once the department officials rescued abandoned babies, and parents who surrendered their children to the District Child Welfare Committee, there was a provision for the mothers and family members to take back their children. Six months will be given for such parents to take back their children. If they do not turn up, then details of all orphaned, rescued, and abandoned children will be uploaded to the CARA website portal to facilitate adoption under the scheme, he said.

DR documentary wins Amnesty's Media Award 2024

Recipients of Amnesty's Media Prize. From left: Lisbeth Dilling, Søren Klovborg, Karoline Engelund and Nikolaj Venge (far right). Number two from the right is David Kildendal, who features in the documentary. Mikkel Inumineq Jørgensen

Amnesty's Media Prize 2024 goes to Søren Klovborg, Karoline Engelund, Lisbeth Dilling and Nikolaj Venge from DR for the documentary series 'Det store adoptiontyveri', which uncovers one of the biggest adoption scandals in Denmark. It investigates and exposes the trafficking of children to Denmark.

It has just been announced in Øksnehallen in Copenhagen, where DJ's Fagfestival 2024 will be held.

How did we move from the first international recognition of children's needs in the 1920s to the signing of the Convention on the Rights of the Child? How did the imperative of protecting the youngest gradually become linked to that of their emancipation, and therefore the consideration of their opinions and capacities for action? Historical insight.

This year, 2024, we commemorate the centenary of the first statement of the rights of the child, through the Geneva Declaration, and the 35th anniversary  of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

From the regulation of labor to the progress of schooling, from the development of pediatrics to the "invention" of early childhood, including state intervention within the family unit when necessary, there were certainly many advances in the 19th century  to improve the fate of children in Europe. But it was in the 20th century  , in the aftermath of the Great War, that the transnational movement for the adoption of a declaration of the rights of the child achieved a tangible result.

Looking back at this story helps shed light on contemporary issues surrounding young people's voices, on an international scale.

The Karnataka High Court recently quashed a criminal case against a woman booked for human trafficking, who allegedly sold her minor daughter for Rs 15,000 to a couple in Maharashtra as she was unable to maintain herself and her child.

In doing so the court noted that the woman had a "bonafide intention" to get the child adopted, even though the procedure was not followed adding that ingredients of the offence of trafficking were not made out. 

Justice K Natarajan allowed the petition filed by one Mandara and quashed the proceedings registered under Section 370 (Trafficking of a Person) read with Section 34 (common intention) IPC and Section 81 (Sale and procurement of children for any purpose) of Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

The FIR registered by the police on March 13, 2019 was based a complaint filed by the one Punith Kumar E., District Child Protection Officer alleging that the petitioner woman had sold her child to accused Nos.2 and 3. 

It was alleged that the petitioner is said to have married to one Girish and out of the wedlock, they begot a male child and the petitioner's husband deserted her and the child. Thereafter, it was alleged that she became intimate with another person named Venkatesh and out of that relationship, she delivered a female child on February 24, 2019.

Ranchi: Adoption process in the state has become increasingly difficult for prospective parents in recent times. The waiting duration has significantly lengthened, with families now having to wait between 2.5 to 3 years before being matched with a child. The waiting list in Jharkhand exceeds 3,000 families.

Govt agencies offer children aged between 0 to 6 years for adoption, comprising those who have been surrendered by their parents or found abandoned.

Sangita Sahay, a social worker at Karuna NMO, said, "Parents in line to adopt is more than the children available for adoption across the district. Since 2018, the number of families seeking to adopt has surged. Now, prospective parents are required to wait at least 2.5 to 3 years before they can adopt a child. These days, the lists from 2021 are being released.

"The current situation is evident at Ranchi's two adoption agencies. Karuna houses 18 children whilst Sahyog Village has seven children available for adoption. Adoption costs Rs 64,000, and agencies conduct post-adoption monitoring to ensure child welfare.

Alka Sharma, superintendent at Sahyog Village, said, "This number is likely understated, as many interested families do not even register with the agency, leaving a significant number unaccounted for. The demand for adopting both a baby girl and a baby boy are the same.

The Chhattisgarh police on Monday arrested a woman for brutally thrashing two girls at a private adoption centre in Kanker district after a CCTV video of the incident went viral on social media, officials said.

The Kanker district administration has suspended the licence of the NGO that runs the adoption centre, following the incident. The district programme officer of the state Woman and Child Development (WCD) department was also suspended for negligence, officials said.

“Seema Dwivedi, superintendent of Visheshkrit Dattak Grahan Agency (Specialised Adoption Agency), run by Pratigya Vikas Sanstha, was seen thrashing the children in the video,” said director WCD, Divya Umesh Mishra. HT can’t verify the authenticity of the video.

Mishra said that a complaint was submitted by the district administration on Saturday and an inspection was carried out on Sunday.

As per the inspection report, seen by HT, Dwivedi admitted that the video clip belonged to the same centre and it happened around a year ago.

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In this summer column, six people tell us which summer will forever be etched in their memory. This week: Leena de Wilde (33) was seven months old when she flew from her native India to her adoptive family in Groningen. Twenty years later, she visited the children's home where she lived for the first time. "If my disability had been discovered then, I would never have been adopted."

You might already know Leena de Wilde (33). At the age of nineteen, she participated in the Mis(s) Verkiezing, an initiative by former presenter and CDA MP Lucille Werner, for women with a physical disability. Since then, Leena has made her job of posing for the camera and goes from casting to casting. As a result, she regularly appears in commercials, videos and campaigns.

"I want to make a positive contribution to the image of people with disabilities. I've been in a wheelchair since I was three, so I've been doing everything sitting down my whole life. I don't know any better. I don't experience many disadvantages, I want to show that," says Leena cheerfully.

When Leena was one and a half years old and had been living with her adoptive parents in Groningen for almost a year, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy (a posture and movement disorder caused by damage to the brain, ed.). This disability was said to be a result of oxygen deficiency at birth.

"I was born on the streets of Mumbai, India. As far as I know, my biological mother took me to the Bal Anand orphanage shortly after I was born, because she was unmarried and did not have the financial means to take care of me. My parents never put much emphasis on my physical disability and always looked at what was possible in my upbringing. I inherited that positive attitude from them."

Decision on Wob request regarding communication with the COIA

Freedom of Information Act request | 02-03-2022

On 2 March 2022, the Minister for Legal Protection made a decision on the Government Information (Public Access) Act request regarding communication by a data subject with the International Adoption Investigation Committee.

Decision on Wob request regarding communication with the COIA (PDF | 7 pages | 174 kB)

Annex I to decision on Wob request regarding communication with the COIA (PDF | 240 pages | 22.6 MB)

Ok..i am not really good at linking stuff, so I have just lifted the whole story from guardian…nice!

LENE Kamm came to Lagos from Denmark last week to attend a conference. But she used the opportunity to search for her father, Emmanuel Owhin whom her Danish mother, Else Gyring Nielsen said is a Nigerian. Born in Denmark in 1957, Lene’s story was published last Saturday in The Guardian. But as it turned out, her father died in 1982.
However, she didn’t come in vain for she was able to unite with her half brothers and sister as well as other members of the family who read her story in The Guardian. The reunion was made possible through the effort of her half sister, Sarah Owhin who returned from London a day after the publication oblivious of it all.
Sarah, 35, recalled that her phone kept ringing around 8 pm last Saturday but she initially ignored it because she didn’t want to be disturbed at that hour of the day. Besides she had just returned from London.
Unknown to her, it was one of her friends, Austin Eni Okojie calling all the way from Abuja. Her mother, Josephine Owhin, urged her on to pick her phone and answer her caller. She eventually did so in disguise. The dialogue, according to Sarah, went thus:
“Can I speak to Sarah?”, asked Okojie.
“No, Sarah is not around; she’s in London. It is Esther her daughter,” she replied.
“Please call Sarah in London and tell her that one of her sisters from Denmark is looking for her father Emmanuel Owhin and wants to meet with his children or relatives.”
“How did you get to know about it,?”
“The story is in The Guardian of today”
She thanked him and pondered in her mind who this person could be. For Sarah, a graduate of Ondo State University who is now based in London, the next step was how to locate Lene in Lagos. She contacted The Guardian to make enquiries.
She was eventually taken to meet Lene with her mother Josephine at the head office of Support A Child, organisers of the workshop that brought Lene to Nigeria, at Victoria Island. There, she was interrogated by Mrs. Abisola Williams, mother of Olatoun Williams, organizer of the workshop.
Sarah’s mother explained that Emmanuel Owhin was her husband and that they met while she was working with the Pilgrimage Board in Lagos and he Owhin was managing director of his company, Fountain Services, an advertising and publishing company based in Ebute-Metta, Lagos in 1968. She explained that her husband was a freelance advertiser with Daily Times at that time. She later tied the nuptial knots with him and the union is blessed with three children: Sarah, Emmanuel (Jnr) and Samson.
Mrs. Williams called people such as Prince Tony Momoh, former minister of information and one time editor of Daily Times to confirm the authenticity of the story. She also called Jane Ejueyitchie-Oroye, a former principal of Oueen’s College Lagos and an Itsekiri woman to ascertain whether she knew anyone called Emmanuel Owhin. She discovered that Emmanuel Owhin’s grandmother was an Itsekiri woman and she lived and died in Lagos.
Linkage confirmed, Olatoun Williams came to take Sarah and her mother to meet Lene who was staying at an hotel in Ikoyi. On sighting her sister, Lene broke into tears. She was consoled by Sarah who said: “God just decided to unite you with your family, since you have been nice to many people helping them to reunite with their families. You don’t need to cry.”
From there, Lene was taken to the family house in Mushin. There, she took so many pictures and met some other of her relatives. Later in the day, her brother, Mark Owhin who had just come from the United Kingdom was hinted about the story and initially he could not believe it. Mark, who was born in 1962, is an engineer based in the UK. He also came to the hotel to be united with Lene. But he forgot his glasses in his car parked outside the hotel. So his sister, Lene, who also equally uses glasses, gave him her glasses for him to read her story in The Guardian.
“I am happy to meet my sister. We are going to keep in touch. We are going to be exchanging letters and we look forward to more good things to come,” he enthused.
Lene is happy that her colleagues from Denmark have already found some resemblance in her and her Sarah. Lene reached her children in Demark and they had a live communication with her brother. Her son, Jens, a lawyer, was very happy that at last, his mother has discovered her roots.

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