Gera ter Meulen, Knowledge Bureau ter Meulen, for Foster Care and Adoption

In the current discussion about intercountry adoption, reference is often made to the principle of subsidiarity. But I come across several publications that show that this may be more complicated than you might think. Like this article with an overview of 9 Asian countries by researchers from Japan and Malaysia.

Subsidiarity

One of the important points of view in the Hague Adoption Convention is the principle of subsidiarity: If a child cannot live with his or her parents, then preferably care in their own network, otherwise domestic adoption. Intercountry adoption is only a last resort if there is no good reception in one's own country. But is good reception always possible in your own country?

UN Guidelines for Alternative Care for Children

Latvia: Parliament Passes Amendments That Will End Intercountry Adoptions to the United States

Last Updated: December 29, 2021

The U.S. Embassy in Riga has confirmed that the Latvian Parliament, Saeima, passed new amendments to the Law on the Protection of the Children's Rights, which will ultimately prohibit intercountry adoptions to the United States, effective July 1, 2022.

The new amendments were signed into law on December 29, 2021. Under the new law, intercountry adoptions from Latvia will only be permitted to countries that have ratified both the Hague Adoption Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and have a bilateral agreement with Latvia establishing a legal framework for adoption.? As a result of the changes, intercountry adoptions will not be allowed between Latvia and the United States, effective July 1, 2022.??

The Embassy will prioritize intercountry adoption cases from Latvia to the United States that are currently in process, as it is our understanding that all cases in which prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) have received referrals before June 30, 2022, will be able to continue under current processes. If PAPs have not received a referral by June 30, 2022, they will not be able to pursue an intercountry adoption from Latvia after July 1, 2022. The Office of Children’s Issues and the U.S. Embassy in Riga are working to identify all pending adoptions cases that are in process. If an adoption service provider (ASP) is aware of any pending petitions for an adoption from Latvia, please contact the Office of Children’s Issues at aspadoption@state.gov immediately.

When the devastating Covid second wave hit India in April 2021, there was barely a family in India left untouched by the virus. The wave, one of the worst experienced by any nation, may have abated, but it has left in its wake a saga of trauma and death.

As 2021 comes to a close, while many are consumed by memories of loss and despair, some look forward to a new beginning. News18.com? brings to you stories of those people who have lost and gained a family this year.

The ‘nowhere’ children

According to a Lancet study, around 1.16 lakh children in India may have lost a parent to Covid from March 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021. The breakdown showed an estimated 25,500 children losing their mothers, some 90,751 their fathers, and 12 both parents to the disease. An assessment by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) suggests around 3,620 children lost both their parents, some 26,176 lost one of them and 274 have been abandoned in the country since the pandemic struck.

The plight of the orphaned or ‘nowhere’ children led to an increased chatter around ‘adoption’. While it was thought of as a viable option, many also feared the threat of child trafficking, often in the form of social media messages calling for the direct adoption of children.

The Centre said it didn’t approve Missionaries of Charity’s (MoC) Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) renewal application “for not meeting eligibility conditions” and over certain “adverse inputs” received when it was considering the application.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee was one of the first to protest after the news reached Kolkata. “Shocked to hear that on Christmas, Union ministry FROZE ALL BANK ACCOUNTS of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in India! Their 22,000 patients & employees have been left without food & medicines. While the law is paramount, humanitarian efforts must not be compromised,” she tweeted.

Missionaries of Charity superior-general Sister M Prema

issued a statement on Monday evening confirming that its

FCRA renewal application had been refused. But there “is no

Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero has enacted one bill related to rules and regulations for licensing Guam adoption agencies while vetoing another.

Bill 206-36, introduced by Sen. Mary Torres, is now Public Law 36-68.

Meanwhile, Bill 179-36, introduced by Sen. Telo Taitague, did not gain the governor's approval.

Both bills shared the same general goal by mandating that adoption agencies or child placement agencies be licensed by the Department of Public Health and Social Services but differed in specific timelines.

Bill 179 would have required adoption agencies to be licensed by June 1, 2022. DPHSS is mandated to promulgate rules and regulations for licensure subject to the Administrative Adjudication Law.

he number of children adopted abroad continues to fall. 244 international adoptions were carried out in 2020 against 421 in 2019, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A decrease of 47%. How to explain the continuation of this collapse which has lasted for more than a decade?

For a decade, the number of foreign adoptions has been steadily declining for French nationals or foreigners residing in France. Several factors explain this decrease.

The ethical question

In 2020, 244 children were adopted abroad by French nationals or foreigners residing in France, according to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Vietnam is the first country of origin for children followed by Colombia, Thailand, Haiti and the Republic of Congo.

Several factors explain the decline in adoptions for several years. In particular, there is a sharp decrease in adopted children in Russia, the first country of origin for a long time, restrictions have been introduced by Moscow.

While visiting the Tekakwitha Nursing Home to sing for residents, 13-year-old Denise Owen was led away from the rest of her boarding school group by a nun. A special surprise awaited her.

There, in another room in the Sisseton, S.D., facility, was her newborn sister, Rose Anne. Denise got only a glimpse of the infant, lying in a bassinet in a long-sleeve shirt and a diaper, before another nun ordered her to leave. Denise was not supposed to see her sibling, soon to be adopted.

It would be 50 years before they saw each other again.

Rose Anne, who would be raised by a Glenside dentist and his wife, became a child of the country’s American Indian adoption era, a decades-long forced assimilation of Native children first established under the Indian Adoption Project, which started in 1958 and evolved to include 50 private and public placement agencies across the United States and Canada, where the so-called Sixties Scoop was coined to describe the mass removal of children from Native homes. During the next 20 years, almost 13,000 Native children would be adopted.

According to a 1969 report by the Association on American Indian Affairs, between 25% and 35% of all Native children were placed in adoptive homes, foster homes, or institutions; and about 90% of those children were being raised by non-Natives.

Thanks to the courage and dedication of our fellow adoptees, new report on “Human Rights Violation in the Past Intercountry Adoption Processes” has been launched. This report is the result of KoRoot's collaborative project with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea and published in Korean for the government officials, members of National Assembly, and stakeholders of adoption system in Korea. You may download the Korean version of the report here. http://www.koroot.org/board/4131/detail

This project has been carried out for the last 7 months(May~December, 2021) with various activities including:

Planning the research(June~November)

Researchers' meetings to categorize human rights violation cases and to form structures of questionnaire. (6 times)

Legal experts' meetings to review the cases' possible legal violations. (6 times)

Looking for a home. The Story of Iresha

32-year-old Iresha was born in India and adopted as a baby by Dutch adoptive parents. Iresha is 12 years old when she dares to confide in someone and tells about how things really go at her home. At the age of 15 she is removed from home. She spends her teenage years in various youth care institutions.

Years later she has her own life on track. She lives in Antwerp where she is educated at the art academy and works on her artworks with great passion. This is her story.

Where I come from

I grew up in a family with Dutch parents. After my arrival in the Netherlands, my parents adopted my sister from Colombia. My mother got pregnant twice more. She interrupted one pregnancy and when I was 7 years old they had another son. I've always felt different. I looked different from the people around me.

Rani was adopted when she was very small. In this book, she travels with her adoptive parents to her native village in India to learn more about her biological mother and her family. Her mother is no longer alive, but Rani wants to visit her two brothers, Palin and Sabal, to get an idea of ??who her mother was. Rani is very insecure about these encounters. With Palin it clicks right away. Rani feels good with this warm, friendly man. The meeting with Sabal is more difficult. But in the end, Sabal and Rani appear to have more in common than they dare to suspect at first sight.

During her stay, Rani is constantly confronted with the difference between her homeland and her native country. She worries if she will ever feel at home in her mother's country. When Rani decides to stay alone with her brother for a while, without her parents, this opens many doors.

In this book Rani gets an answer to the question why her mother gave her up for adoption. She discovers that her mother was a temple dancer who was forced into prostitution against her will, just like her sister. Her sister loses her life and her mother eventually dies of grief for not being able to protect her daughter. She wants a different future for Rani and gives her up for adoption.

Rani discovers how hard it is for her family, as Dalits, within the caste system in India. Ultimately, Rani and her family fight against the injustice caused by this system. When she travels back to the west at the end of the story, she feels like a real Dalit, who wants nothing more than to wake up the West for all the injustice that is happening in her homeland.

'Kiss from India' is the sequel to 'Barefoot Dancing'. However, you can read the book separately. The information you have obtained in the first book can sometimes be enriching, but you do not really need it to be completely absorbed in this story.