THIRUVANANTHAPUR: Seven months have passed since a high-ranking IAS official submitted a report which contained adverse comments on the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare (KSCCW) for flouting adoption norms, but no action has been taken in the matter so far.

Many feel the reason no action has been initiated so far is because KSCCW's General Secretary, J.S. Shiju Khan, is a top youth leader of the ruling CPI-M.

Incidentally, the KSCCW along with the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) was in the news when it was alleged that it had allowed adoption of a child to an Andhra Pradesh couple last year.

Trouble began when a former student activist of the CPI-M, Anupama, and her now husband Ajith, also a local CPI-M leader, claimed that four days after she delivered her baby boy in October 2020, her parents forcibly took the child away and later the KSCCWC and CWC allowed the child to be adopted by an Andhra Pradesh couple.

Following media outcry, which began in September 2021, action begun on the distraught mother's pleas.

A senior official from the Department of Social Defence in Tamil Nadu said that non-availability of breast milk is a concern for newborns who are under the care of specialised adoption agencies

The non-availability of breast milk for newborns under the care of specialised adoption agencies in Tamil Nadu is a concern, S. Valarmathi, State’s Director of Social Defence, said here on Saturday.

Inaugurating the fourth edition of “Clinical updates in Indian breastfeeding practice” at SIMS Hospital here, she pointed out that there were many infants who did not have access to breast milk in the roughly 20 specialised adoption agencies under the monitoring of the Department of Social Defence.

Highlighting the importance of breast milk for infants, she asked if any of the organisations and healthcare professionals participating in the conference would be able to help in ensuring access to breast milk for these children.

According to the Social Welfare and Women Empowerment Department, under which the Department of Social Defence functions, 23 specialised adoption agencies are functioning in the State. Orphaned, abandoned or surrendered children are kept under the care of these agencies after they are declared legally free for adoption by the Child Welfare Committees of respective districts.

A parliamentary committee has said some 185,000 children were taken away for adoption between 1949 and 1976 in England and Wales, and urged an official apology.

Anne Neale, from the campaign group Legal Action for Women, welcomed any such admission as "long overdue".

But she said the committee had "refused" to examine cases of mothers being forced to give up their children today despite having done nothing wrong.

Activists say the law's singular focus on the well-being of the child has led to thousands of children being taken away from parents, even without evidence of any abuse.

Often it is because their mothers have suffered from mental health issues or domestic violence.

The European Commission has taken Hungary to the EU's top court for allegedly violating laws on media freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.

The Commission Friday announced it was sending Hungary to the Court of Justice of the European Union for refusing to renew a radio license for independent Hungarian media Klubradio. Hungary will also have to face European judges over an anti-LGBTQ+ law. The law seeks to prevent children and teenagers from accessing content and ads about LGBTQ+ issues.

Budapest's actions go against several European telecom, audiovisual and digital laws, including the Audiovisual Media Services Directive and the e-Commerce Directive, the Commission argues. The anti-LGBTQ+ rules also infringe on crucial foundational European texts — the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU and Treaty of the EU — and the EU Charter of fundamental rights.

Brussels' move comes after it said Hungary's explanations failed to assuage the Commission's concerns. The Commission had launched infringement procedures in June 2021.

The Delhi High Court on Friday said it will not permit an unmarried woman to undergo medical termination of pregnancy at 23 weeks, observing it virtually amounts to killing the foetus.

The high court also said the law granted time to unmarried women to undergo the procedure of medical termination of pregnancy and the legislature has “purposefully excluded consensual relationship” from the category of cases where termination is permissible after 20 weeks and up to 24 weeks.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma, while dealing with the petition by the woman to undergo medical termination of pregnancy, suggested that the petitioner be kept “somewhere safe” until she delivers the child who can subsequently be given up for adoption.

“We will ensure that the girl is kept somewhere safe and she can deliver and go. There is a big queue for adoption,” observed the bench, also comprising Justice Subramonium Prasad.

“We will not permit you to kill that child. (We are) very sorry. This virtually amounts to killing (the foetus),” said the court orally as it noted that almost 24 out of 36 weeks of gestation were over.

LONDON: Britain should formally apologise to unmarried mothers who were forced to give up their babies for adoption, according to an official report Friday that gave harrowing detail of the anguish suffered by the women.

Some 185,000 children were taken away for adoption between 1949 and 1976 in England and Wales, the report by parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights estimated.

The committee’s chairwoman, Labour MP Harriet Harman, said the bond between mothers and babies was “brutally ruptured” over the period.

“The mothers’ only ‘crime’ was to have become pregnant while unmarried. Their ‘sentence’ was a lifetime of secrecy and pain,” she said.

The committee acknowledged the “grave wrong” done to the mothers and their children, Harman said, adding: “It is time for the government to do the same and issue the apology they seek.

BY PIJ INVESTIGATIONS

The Timotheos Foundation in Malawi was founded on June 10, 2011, in a quest to spread Christian evangelism and support the country’s most vulnerable, through among others, education bursaries to the most underprivileged children.

The foundation was a development arm of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Malawi. Today, decades later, the foundation is at the centre of one of the most horrific allegations of child sexual abuse in the country.

At the center of the allegations is a Dutch National, Wim Akster, who in 2011 responded to a call to help run the foundation. Through the foundation and support of the Dutch Timotheos Board, they were going to tackle poverty, support the communities surrounding its churches and work with reformed churches to spread the Word of God to local Malawians.

Six boys who worked at the foundation allege that they were molested by Akster, accusations that led to Akster’s arrest in August 2020…Akster denies abusing the boys, arguing all sexual activity was consensual, and has applied to the constitutional court, seeking a declaration that his arrest infringed on his right to privacy and, in effect, a declaration that the country’s anti-homosexuality laws are illegal.

Getasew Ferguson was going through his paces at a regular Bond University Bull Sharks AFL training session when one word stopped him in his tracks.

Teammate Abe Forward had approached him after learning they were both from the same East African country. They soon discovered their similarities ran much deeper.

“Abe said ‘hello’ to me in Ethiopian,” Ferguson said.

“I was like, what! I was surprised because I never knew he was from my country. We spoke for a while and figured out we were both from the same orphanage, which was pretty cool.”

The pair, both 23, were born only a few hours away from one another. Now they are close friends.

The Dutch state has not done enough to ensure that the adoption of Dilani Butink from Sri Lanka goes smoothly, the court ruled this week. Do other adoptees also benefit from that statement?

Adopted Dilani Butink could hardly believe it this week. After years of legal wrangling, the Court of Appeal in The Hague confirmed what it had suspected for much longer: that the Dutch state and the Child and Future Foundation acted unlawfully when Dilani was transferred to the Netherlands as a baby from Sri Lanka for adoption in 1992.

Butink is one of many foreign adoptees struggling with falsified or missing information in their adoption file. Without the right ancestry data, a search for biological family is often an impossible quest. This is the first time that a judge has expressed such a critical view of the state's responsibility in foreign adoptions. With the judgment of the court in hand, Butink can claim damages from the state and the foundation that arranged her adoption at the time – for example for all the costs of her efforts to find her family.

baby gangs

Can other adoptees also draw hope from this statement? It looks like that. Lawyer Dewi Deijle, himself adopted from Indonesia, represents more than a hundred adoptees and has already tried twice on their behalf to hold the state liable for damage suffered. The government has consistently rejected those requests. Deijle postponed a step to court until now. 'Cause it's all so hard to prove. During the period that I was adopted, there were already stories about baby gangs robbing and selling children. I may have been one of them, but how can I prove that?'

Times have changed since Aotearoa's adoption system was written into law in 1955. Where once they removed all records of biological parents, there are now calls for the Ministry of Justice to give adopted children greater access to information about their birth family and culture, and support in reconnecting.

When Erica Newman's mother was growing up, the other kids at school had questions.

They wanted to know why she was brown when her parents were white.

She was seven years old when she found out she was adopted – but Newman says it wasn't until her mother was older, with children of her own, that she was driven to find answers.

"She always had a questioning and wondering about her taha M?ori, understanding that side of her family and her identity," says Newman, who is now the coordinator for the indigenous development programme at the University of Otago.