Zagreb - On Wednesday, the parliamentary Committee on the Family and Youth presented proposals to improve the law on inter-country adoptions, including a ban on adoptions from countries that are not signatories to the Hague Convention and for an expert body to monitor adoptions.

The Committee held a thematic session in light of the trial of eight Croatian citizens who went to Africa to adopt four children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were arrested in neighbouring Zambia on charges of attempted child trafficking.

Most children are adopted from Colombia, Ukraine, China, India and South Korea, and according to data from 2020, DR Congo is only in 19th place, said Professor Dubravka Hrabar from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb.

The Hague Convention on the protection of children and cooperation in connection with international adoption is a document that lays down standards aimed at preventing child trafficking. However, DR Congo is not a signatory to that document, warned Hrabar.

"We need to react urgently and ban adoptions from 'non-Hague countries'." This requires the coordination of various state bodies. I am concerned that we may be part of a wider chain of child trafficking because I know that there is drug, prostitution and child trafficking," said Hrabar.

Human emotions and relations can heal sickness and truly warm the cockles of the heart. One such relationship has been between a 59-year-old American woman and Indian children whom she has come here to aid. These children suffer from the rare condition of bladder exstrophy, and she felt the need to help them after seeing her own adopted Chinese-origin daughter suffer from the same condition.

A number of pediatric patients and their parents come to meet her from near and far at an international programme at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital being run for the last 15 years.

Child adopted from orphanage

Florida resident Pamela Artigas hails from an affluent family. She said she wanted to do something for the community when she came to know that there was a child with a heart ailment at an orphanage run by XU Zhou Welfare organisation in China, who nobody was willing to adopt. Pamela adopted a little girl, Lily. After some time, she learnt that another 2-year-old was not getting adopted as she was suffering from bladder exstrophy, where her bladder was outside her body. The child was tied to a chair when Pamela saw her for the first time.

Pamela said, “I loved the child at first sight and soon started the procedure to adopt her. It takes 18 months to adopt a child in China. I contacted bladder exstrophy expert Dr Grady Richard in the US even before the process was complete.”

Orphanages in Mumbai are being phased outIt happens once in a while that orphanages in DIA's cooperation countries close. This unfortunately applies to the Indian orphanage Bal Vikas.We have contact with several adoptees and adopters who are naturally worried about what will happen to adoption papers, for example, or who would like to see the orphanage again.Our adoption coordinator, Tina, is in close dialogue with the contact person in India, who is the long-time leader of Bal Vikas, Jaisita.There is not yet a concrete date for closing and the plan is that the adoption papers will be stored with an authority in Mumbai.Jaisita is currently working on getting more concrete information and as soon as we hear from her, we will announce more here, on Facebook and on the website.You can read more about the orphanage's phasing out on our website.

Børnehjem i Mumbai udfases

Japan’s government has ordered the Unification Church to comply with national child adoption rules amid allegations of unauthorized adoption among its believers' families.

Katsunobu Kato, Health, Labor, and Welfare minister, told reporters during a Jan. 23 press conference that an investigation is underway over the church’s shady adoption deals, the Mainichi reported.

“In connection with the adoption mediation business, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will provide the information collected… to the investigative authorities regarding the facts related to past adoptions,” Kato said.

The minister stated that a guidance document will be sent on the same day to the Unification Church.

Earlier on Dec. 9, 2022, a similar administrative notice was sent to the Unification Church highlighting the general interpretation of the adoption mediation law.

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Generational obsessive preference for sons in rural India is rooted in the prevalent patriarchal system that has ultimately indoctrinated into a gender biased situation, thereby, disregarding the value and capacity of daughters. Thus, when we talk about the upsurge in girl child adoption, it still remains a concerning issue in rural India.

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Child adoption can generally be defined as a personal, social and legal act whereby an adult accepts a child as their own with a sense of responsibility, care and love. The adoptive parent/parents honour and restore the fundamental rights and obligations of the adopted child. Child adoption involves three participants; the adoptive child, the birth family and the adoptive family. It is due to the integrated involvement of this triad that child adoption acquires the nature of ‘social service’.

Touching on child adoption, specifically adoption of the girl child, data uploaded on the website of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) reveals that prospective adoptive parent/parents prefer girls over boys in their adoption plan. The CARA data states that in 2019-20 of the 3,351 in-country adoptions there were 1,938 girls and 1,413 boys. In 2020-21 of the 3,142 domestic adoptions 1,856 were girls and 1,286 were boys. Thereby, accentuating a steady escalation in the number of girl child adoptees.

The formal practice of child adoption is governed by a myriad of ethical principles like justice, non-maleficence and benevolence. Talking of justice and unfairness in the context of child adoption in the Indian milieu, it is apparent that there is a lack of equal inclusivity on the basis of the child’s gender identity.

An unusual commission investigation has begun in South Korea.

The South Korean authorities will investigate whether adoptions to the West have taken place on an erroneous or flawed basis.

The commission started in December 2022 by selecting 34 suspicious cases. As many as 20 of them concerned adoptions to Denmark.

At the beginning of January, the commission dealt with a further 130 cases, and the commission will contact the last adoptees during February and March .

Among the first cases is Louise Kwangs from Denmark. DR has previously been able to tell how the Korean adoption agency, Korean Social Service (KSS), falsified her background information to make the adoption process easier.

DR Congo

NEWS Author:Hina24.01.2023 17:33

Podijeli :

EMMANUEL CROSET / AFP / ILUSTRACIJA

Supreme Court President Radovan Dobronic has examined the proceedings by Croatian courts concerning adoptions of children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and found that 16 municipal courts dealt with such cases and none of the applications were denied, Croatia's highest court said on Tuesday.

한성호 Norwegian Korean Rights Group 24 January 2023 at 10:01 · Hvem har mest troverdighet her etter siste dagers hendelser (jfr saken nedenfor med Simon)? Reagerer på telefonsamtale med Adopsjonsforum: − Forsøkt kneblet John Erik Aarsheim sier Adopsj

 Norwegian Korean Rights Group 24 January 2023 at 10:01 · Who has the most credibility here after the events of the last day (cf. the case below with Simon)? Responding to a telephone conversation with Adoption Forum: - Tried to gag John Erik Aarsheim says Adoption

The latest official Sri Lankan data come from 2017. Norway plans to set up an independent inquiry. In the 1970s, baby farms were popular, selling Sri Lankan babies with false papers to European couples. Some Sri Lankans remember younger siblings going missing this way.

Colombo (AsiaNews) – The Norwegian government plans to investigate adoptions from Sri Lanka going as far back as the 1980s after discovering that possibly 11,000 Sri Lankan babies were illegally adopted.

Norway’s Children and Family Minister Kjersti Toppe told the Verdens Gang (VG) newspaper that the government is setting up an independent commission of inquiry to look into the matter.

In the 1970s, Sri Lanka had several "baby farms" that sold minors to European couples providing them with false papers. In 2017, Sri Lankan authorities admitted that 11,000 children may have been adopted illegally.

Sources in Sri Lanka's Ministry of Women, Child Affairs and Social Empowerment told AsiaNews that in 2021, Romanticized Immigration, an organisation led by Priyangika Samanthie, a Norwegian adopted as a child from Sri Lanka, had called for an investigation into international adoptions.