Israel said Monday it will compensate families whose children were taken from their parents in the early years after the state was founded, in a major development in the so-called "stolen babies" affair.

Activists and family members have for decades charged that up to several thousand babies were taken in the years after Israel gained statehood in 1948, mainly from Jewish Yemenite families, but also from immigrants of other Arab and Balkan nations.

They allege the babies were stolen and given to Jewish families of Western origin in Israel and even abroad, mainly those who could not have children themselves.

In a statement, the government expressed "regret over the events that occurred in the early days of the state and recognises the suffering of the families whose children were part of this painful affair".

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the statement called it "among the painful affairs" in Israel's history.

• In short: Damning claims by an SA government whistleblower have been levelled against the way child protection authorities are removing newborns from their mothers at public hospitals.
• SA's Department for Child Protection removed more than 100 babies aged under one month in the last financial year.
• What's next? A review of SA Health policy is due to be handed down by the end of the year.

After hours in labour, a new mother finally hears a high-pitched wail.

She's overcome with joy, exhaustion and relief, as a midwife hands her a tiny newborn, healthy and crying.

But in a scene described by a South Australian government whistleblower, what happens next is anything but joyous.

As the new mum holds her seconds-old baby to her chest, police officers and security guards stand at the hospital's delivery-room door.

Flor and Jazmin were among many children separated from their parents during El Salvador's civil war, and put up for adoption in the US and Europe. Now, nearly 40 years later, they and many others are searching for their birth families. But has anyone been searching for them?

Flor Wolman has a small scar the size of a quarter dollar coin on the left side of her stomach. Some of the girls at her school in the US used to tease her that it looked like a second belly button.

It's actually a gunshot wound she received when she was a little girl, and it still hurts, says Flor. It's also a constant and painful reminder of her harrowing family history.

"I just want to know what happened, why was I separated from my parents," the 42-year-old says. "And what the scar had to do with my adoption".

She was born Flor de Luz Acosta in 1979 in San Francisco Lempa, a tiny settlement of adobe houses and infertile hillsides in northern El Salvador. It was at the start of the country's bloody civil war. The rugged mountainous region where her family lived was the scene of fierce fighting between Marxist rebels and the US-backed military. Civilians caught in the middle were often regarded as rebel supporters.

The Family and Social Services Ministry has reported that the number of children under state protection is 14,761, while 9,981 children are in foster care and 19,689 children have been adopted as of February 2024.

The ministry has revealed that children make up 26 percent of the nation's population, with recent figures from 2023 indicating a gender-balanced composition of 10.8 million girls and 11.3 million boys.

Highlighting their commitment to child welfare, the ministry informed that 14,761 children are under their care, with 9,981 in foster care and 1,689 successfully adopted. Emphasizing the importance of family-oriented support, the ministry prioritizes services aimed at fostering psychological and social well-being among children, striving to cultivate self-confidence and self-sufficiency.

"Children in need of protection are primarily evaluated within the scope of Family Oriented Services. Foster Family and Adoption Services are carried out for children who are not supported by their families to live in a family environment," the ministry said in the written statement.

Efforts to provide children with stable family environments extend to offering social and economic support to families in need. In February, the ministry disbursed 1.7 billion Turkish Liras ($52.5 million) in support payments to these families, along with an allocation of 186 million liras ($5.7 million) to foster families responsible for children under the ministry's guardianship.

The scholarly work backing a Dutch board's recommendation to ban all foreign adoptions has been attacked as 'unscientific'. Does that argument hold water?

A local women feeds orphaned children at the Pouponniere of Mbour, Senegal. Joe Giddense/Press Association. All rights reserved.

On 1 November 2016, the Netherlands’ Raad voor Strafrechtstoepassing en Jeugdbescherming (RSJ – in English, The Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Protection of Juveniles) issued a report (in Dutch) advising the Dutch minister of security and justice to ban all foreign adoptions. Among their reasons for coming to this conclusion were documented illegalities and unethical practices in the intercountry adoption system, as well as scholarly literature that argues that intercountry adoption can lead to greater institutionalisation of children and/or disrupt the development of robust child protection systems in the children’s countries of origin.

Several faculty members of the Leiden University Knowledge Centre for Adoption and Foster Care (ADOC) immediately criticised the RSJ report. Marinus (Rien) van IJzendoorn in particular questioned the quality of the research on which the RSJ report based their decision. This included one of my own articles, Addicted to Orphans: How the Global Orphan Industrial Complex Jeopardizes Local Child Protection Systems, which I co-authored with Karen Smith Rotabi.

The ways that van IJzendoorn’s blog distorts our article’s argument deserves a personal response. It also raises crucial issues about what constitutes ‘quality research’ and the uses/objectivity of ‘science’, particularly when it comes to social justice and protection for children. Whether or not one agrees with the RSJ recommendation, these issues should also be critically addressed in the debate.

Just over 200 adoptions were finalised in Australia last year - an all time low and dramatic decline since reporting began more than 50 years ago.

The Australian government started recording adoptions in 1968-1969.

The number of children adopted increased from 6773 in the first year to a peak of 9798 in 1971-1972.

But the latest data in a report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows a combined 201 domestic and inter-country adoptions were recorded in 2022-2023, a decline of 98 per cent since the early 1970s peak.

Over the last five years the number of adoptions has decreased from 330 to 201.

Jan and Esther Ekkel have been waiting for this for years. They have been told that they have been assigned a son. They can pick him up at a children's home in Malawi. Jan and Esther Ekkel have been waiting for this for years. Finally the time has come! They have been told that they have been assigned a son. They can pick him up at a children's home in Malawi. All they have is a photo and his name: Chimwemwe. We follow Jan and Esther to Malawi. We see their first meeting with the still silent Thomas Chimwemwe. Uncomfortable and unreal, for Jan and Esther as well as for Thomas. For the first few weeks they live together on the grounds of the orphanage, while they wait for the legal conclusion of the adoption procedure. Meanwhile, they pay an emotional visit to Thomas

Mariela Neagu’s Voices from the Silent Cradles: Life Histories of Romania’s Looked-After Children was first published by Policy Press in the UK. 

Neagu, a research associate at the University of Oxford, describes her book as follows: 

“In 1990, disturbing television footage emerged showing the inhumane conditions in which children in Romanian institutions were living, and viewers were surprised that the babies were silent. The so-called ‘Romanian orphans’ became subjects of several international research studies. In parallel, Romania had to reform its child protection system in order to become a member of the European Union.

This book sheds light on the lived experiences of these children, who had become adults by the time the country joined the EU. Uniquely, the book brings together the accounts of those who stayed in institutions, those who grew up in foster care and those who were adopted, both in Romania and internationally. Their narratives challenge stereotypes about these types of care.”

Now, Neagu’s book has been translated into Romanian and published with Cluj University Press. She says this was very important to her given that most of the forty people she interviewed were Romanian speakers, and therefore one of her most important target audiences will now be able to read the book in their native language. 

Chinese boy adopted by Dutch couple finds biological parents after 12-year-long search In 1994, Gouming got lost when his parents were travelling from their home in China's Jiangsu province to his mother's hometown in Sichuan province. DH Web Desk La...

A PhD graduate in linguistics, Gouming Martens of the Chinese descent has found his birth parents after a 12-year-long quest. ADVERTISEMENT According to a report by South China Morning Post, Gouming was adopted by a couple from Netherlands when he was four-years-old after he got lost while travelling with this biological parents. In 1994, Gouming got lost when his parents were travelling from their home in China's Jiangsu province to his mother's hometown in Sichuan province. He was sent to to an orphanage and was adopted in 1996 by a Dutch couple - Jozef and Maria Martens. According to SCMP, the orphanage had named him Gou Yongming and after adoption, the Martens called him Gouming so that he could remember where he came from as they ...

Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/world/chinese-boy-adopted-by-dutch-couple-finds-biological-parents-after-12-year-long-search-3087620


 

Karnataka

Search for biological mother leads German woman to Raichur

In her quest to trace her long lost biological mother, a German national has been travelling across Karnataka for a decade.

Mariya Chaya Schupp