Many adopted children, youth and adults need help now!

Children, young people over 18 and adult adoptees have so far been able to get help via the PAS scheme at the Appeals Board. 

In recent months, the demand for PAS courses has been enormous. In 2023, over 600 PAS courses were completed, and the demand this year is still increasing, which can be attributed to the much mention of the adoption area in recent times.

Everyone agrees that it is very important that we support the adopted at a time when their identity is being questioned. Therefore, it also comes as a very big surprise to us that they do not have control over the funding for this very important PAS work.

No adoptee should be left alone and without the possibility of help.

Taipei, March 13 (CNA) The Ministry of Health and Welfare on Wednesday said it had ordered a child welfare foundation to temporarily stop accepting new adoption cases after a 1-year-old boy it placed in foster care died after allegedly being abused by his caregiver.

In addition to halting new adoptions, the existing adoption cases being handled by the organization, the Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF), will also be subject to increased supervision by local governments, the ministry said.

Speaking at a press conference, Deputy Health Minister Lee Li-feng (李麗芬) said her ministry was planning to meet Friday with a group of experts, the Taipei and New Taipei city governments, and the CWLF, which will submit a review report on the incident.

A decision will be made at a later date whether or not to allow the group to resume taking new adoption cases, Lee said.

Including the CWLF, there are currently eight organizations in Taiwan involved in facilitating adoptions. Nationwide, 468 children are awaiting adoption, including around 200 aged three and under, Lee said.

In 1979, China introduced a law that stated that families could only have one child. The policy was introduced in a draconian attempt to fight poverty and control the population. Unfortunately, this meant many children were abandoned. When Kati Pohler's parents became pregnant with a second child, they knew that they could not keep her. They left her on a bridge with a note saying that in 10 or 20 years' time, for her to come to find them. This is how it all unfolded. 

Meet Me On The Bridge

Originally from China, Kati Pohler grew up in Michigan under the loving care of her adoptive family. Her biological parents Qian Fenxiang and Xu Lida, however, still live in China with Kati's biological older sister. At the time when Kati was born, China still had its now abolished one-child policy. A couple who got pregnant a second time would either face forced abortion or heavy financial penalties if caught otherwise. (1)

Her parents kept the pregnancy a secret because they did not want to abort the child. Still, they knew that they could not keep her. Kati's biological mom gave birth to her on a houseboat, hidden away from the eyes of any doctors or authorities who would have to report them. Next, Qian and Xu took Kati to a covered vegetable market and left her there with a hand-written note.

"Our daughter, Jingzhi, was born at 10am on the 24th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, 1995. We have been forced by poverty and affairs of the world to abandon her. Oh, pity the hearts of fathers and mothers far and near!

Balmaceda, head of the investigation into irregular adoptions. In charge of this file for 5 years, the judge has 1,100 international adoption files to process, covering the period 1970 – 1999. To date, 650 files have been analyzed. The judge declared: “during the five years of investigation, I have not succeeded in establishing the commission of a crime”. 

This partial assessment may seem surprising if we consider the circumstances in which international adoption of Chilean children developed. The dictatorship of General Pinochet (1973 -1990) is known for having resorted to forced disappearances of political opponents and discrimination against indigenous minorities. The government, aware of its “image deficit” internationally, and considering the number of “orphan” children, opened the country to international adoption, thus hoping to give the world a more human face of the regime. Several  thousand children  have been adopted in Western countries, for example in  Sweden , France, the United States and Switzerland. The context was therefore conducive to abuse, and today, many Chilean families are demanding accountability (see also my publication of 01/13/2023).

To explain this lack of convictions, it must be emphasized that Judge Balmaceda does... the work of a judge: he analyzes the facts and decides whether they constitute a crime within the meaning of the law. The judge notes that although it sometimes came close, it was not possible to construct a legal argument that could lead to a conviction: “All the people who seem concerned and who are alive have been heard, but the existence of a punishable act could not be established, nor the presumptions allowing the qualification of participation in the facts as author, accomplice or receiver. The people who seemed most involved in the facts and who could possibly have established some responsibility, are now deceased.” Asked how to qualify the facts reported by the victim families, the judge replied: “It is difficult to judge the events of the time with today's mentality. Most of the 1,100 cases occurred before 1989, when the legislation was changed and was vastly different from what it is today. It included far fewer guarantees and made it possible to place children with people for adoption.” The judge also details the processes which made it possible to achieve a national or international adoption, and notes how difficult it is to question practices which, at the time, were, at least formally, in conformity with the law in force. And the judge concluded: “an act may be morally reprehensible, but I am the criminal judge, and I must punish behavior that constitutes a crime.”

This testimony is important in light of current debates surrounding responsibilities linked to irregular adoptions of the past. It sheds very specific light on the way in which these acts can be qualified from a purely criminal point of view. If the observation of the impossibility of a criminal conviction can be difficult for the victims to accept (the organization “Hijos y Madres del Silencio” has also requested the resignation of the judge following this article), “the exercise Chilean” has the merit of demonstrating that the legal route is not always the preferred route. Of course, this does not mean that nothing wrong was done and that we should move on; In this sense, historical studies and restorative measures remain absolutely necessary.

But this new piece of the puzzle questions more broadly initiatives aimed at “criminalizing” practices linked to irregular adoptions, in particular those which seek to qualify them as crimes against humanity. Having already expressed myself several times on the subject, I am not going to reopen the debate here, but Judge Balmaceda's findings raise questions: if ordinary criminal law does not allow conviction, is it a question of persisting in this direction and to try to construct other legal reasoning to achieve a conviction “at all costs”? Or is it rather a matter of taking note of the fact that the law's response is precisely to say that it is not possible to convict? Naturally, the diversity of contexts, eras and actors could allow other conclusions to be reached. The fact remains that the law is also subject to general principles of human rights (no punishment without law for example) which must also be respected.

Concerned about the sterility of his couple and eager to have an heir to succeed him, Napoleon planned to adopt Eugène de Beauharnais, the fruit of Joséphine's first marriage. To do this, he includes adoption in the code that bears his name. Far from the adoption of children as we know it, it is an agreement between consenting adults, since a man must be 30 years old to be able to be adopted and 25 years old for a woman. Adoption is then only a question of transmission of inheritance.

It was only in the 20th century  that adoption took care of children, it officially becoming possible for minors in 1923. The two world wars having caused more deaths among civilians than among soldiers, it seems logical to bring together those who have lost their parents and those who have lost their children. However, it was not until 1966, and the will of an adoptive father who became Prime Minister (Georges Pompidou), that adopted children could benefit from the same rights as biological children. The French particularity, which has fueled futile debates for a long time, is that to this status which gives fullness (full adoption) of rights and duties to adoptive families, another status is added, that of simple adoption, heir to the law Napoleonic. Since then, it has been conclusively explained that full adoption irrevocably cuts all ties between the child and his biological family, whereas these would be maintained in simple adoption. Some then imagine this rupture as total, brutal and harmful. They demonstrate an aversion to full adoption, accusing it of cutting the child off from his origins, of denying him the right to his previous existence. Among the most virulent, we hear that full adoption is a forgery or a fiction, therefore a lie for the child.

The recent debate over marriage and adoption by homosexual couples has awakened these old demons. The term fiction was even used to describe plenary adoption during the Senate Law Committee during these debates. Of course, we know that the idea of ​​fiction is not necessarily pejorative. It indicates the capacity that the right has to establish a link by declaring adopted children born to their adoptive parents in the civil status. But legal fiction does not encompass the whole of the adoptive experience. The law, no more than biology, does not focus on the link of filiation, adoptive or not. Adoption may trouble some legal scholars who, as the name of their discipline suggests, want to stay square. But isn't it adoption itself, in its entirety, which is a fiction? To give a family, which is not related to him, to a child, that is surprising. Accepting that a child who doesn't look like them can call adults to whom he is attached “daddy” and “mommy” doesn't seem very normal. However, for thirty years in France, tens of thousands of adoptive families have been built and flourished in a society that is more curious than caring.

After growing up and taking over the family business, Naval Tata married Sooni Commissariat with whom he had two sons - Ratan Tata and Jimmy Tata. The couple got separated in the 1940s.

 The Tata Group is one of the most successful businesses in India but not many people are aware of the Tata family tee. Today, we will tell you about Ratan Tata's father Naval Tata who was not born but was adopted into the multi-billion dollar net worth business family.

Naval Tata was born in 1904 in a middle-class family. His father was a Spinning Master in the Advanced Mills at Ahmedabad. He died in 1908. His family then relocated to Navsari. Naval Tata's mother was the sole earner of the family through her embroidery work. Naval Tata was young when he was boarded at the JN Petit Parsi Orphanage. Here, Navajbai, wife of Ratanji Tata, adopted him and turned his fortunes. Naval Tata was 13 years old at the time. He then graduated from Bombay University in Economics and then went to London for a course in Accounting. 

fter growing up and taking over the family business, Naval Tata married Sooni Commissariat with whom he had two sons - Ratan Tata and Jimmy Tata. The couple got separated in the 1940s. Naval Tata then married Simone Dunoyer, a businesswoman from Switzerland, in 1955. Noel Tata is their son. 

Naval Tata’s wife Simone Tata is the stepmother of former Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata. Famous make-up brand Lakme and popular store Westside are also the brainchild of Simone Tata.

Expert Meeting on “Sale of Children and Illegal Adoption”

22 September 2016

On 19-20 September, Leiden University Child Law Department and Terre de Hommes co-organized an expert meeting on ‘’Sale of Children and Illegal Adoption’’ at Leiden University.

The expert meeting was held in preparation for a future thematic report to be published on illegal adoption by Ms. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. It aimed to discuss and provide further input to a draft research report by Mr. Nigel Cantwell.

The event was chaired by Ms. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio and Mr. Nigel Cantwell, and included experts from across the globe, among them representatives of central authorities, the Hague Conference on Private International Law, and prominent academic experts from Europe and the U.S. Prof. Ton Liefaard, Claire Achmad LLM and Daniella Zlotnik, LLM participated on behalf of Leiden Law School. The expert meeting was opened by Prof. Rick Lawson.

PERSBERICHT TEVREDENHEID GEADOPTEERDEN

Persbericht 9 juli 2019

Meeste volwassen geadopteerden tevreden met hun leven

Interlandelijke adoptie roept zowel positieve als negatieve reacties op en de discussie dringt door tot ver in het beleid. Afstand en adoptie zijn zware ingrepen in het leven van mensen en door de internationale context is het risico van onrechtmatigheden ook groot[1]. Vanuit de media overheerst vaak een negatieve berichtgeving over adoptie. Maar weerspiegelt dit beeld de werkelijkheid? Zijn de meesten van de 40.000 interlandelijk geadopteerden ontevreden met hun adoptie? Om hierover duidelijkheid te krijgen, initieerden de organisatoren van de EurAdopt[2] conferentie in 2016 een onderzoek naar de tevredenheid van een grote, gevarieerde groep interlandelijk geadopteerden in Nederland. Het wetenschappelijk artikel over dit onderzoek is deze maand gepubliceerd.

Doordat zowel adoptieorganisaties, adoptieouders als organisaties voor geadopteerden meewerkten, kon een gevarieerde groep geadopteerden gehoord worden: geadopteerden die kritisch zijn ten opzichte van adoptie, geadopteerden die er positief tegenover staan en geadopteerden die meestal niet in de media komen. Over de uitkomsten van deze vragenlijst is nu vanuit het Instituut Pedagogische Wetenschappen aan de Universiteit Leiden een artikel verschenen in het tijdschrift ‘Adoption and Fostering’.

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Minister Lahbib refers to the Hague Adoption Convention, not the UNCRC