On Wednesday 24 November, the court ruled on two cases concerning intercountry adoption. A woman adopted from Bangladesh and a man illegally adopted from Brazil have both filed lawsuits over their adoption. The court in The Hague rejected the woman's claims on the basis of prescription and a substantive assessment. In the case of illegal adoption from Brazil, the court partially allowed the claims. According to Defense for Children, both cases show how complicated it is for intercountry adoptees to recover parentage information, restore identity and seek justice when fundamental rights have been violated.

Case 1: adoption from Bangladesh

In 1976, the then four-year-old woman and her brother were adopted from Bangladesh in the Netherlands. Following an episode of Nieuwsuur in November 2017, the woman realized that her biological mother did not abandon her children, but gave them up under false pretenses and then searched for them for years.

The woman has filed a lawsuit against Terre des Hommes (whose country director at the time had a double function and was also a representative of an adoption organization), adoption organization Wereldkinderen (then BIA) and the State. Its position is that the accused parties contributed to the adoption that allegedly took place under false pretenses. According to the woman, the accused parties also failed to properly investigate abuses in intercountry adoptions from Bangladesh and to inform those involved about this.

Terre des Hommes and Wereldkinderen invoked the fact that the woman was adopted more than twenty years ago and that her claims are therefore time-barred. The court ruled in favor of the organizations in this regard. The court also states that Terre des Hommes was not involved in this adoption at the time. The State initially also invoked statute of limitations, but withdrew it following a report that the Commission Investigating Intercountry Adoption (COIA) issued in February 2021 about abuses in intercountry adoptions and the role that the government plays in this. After substantive treatment, the court considers the woman's claim that her adoption in 1976 from Bangladesh was unlawfully established.

Opposition members in Lok Sabha Wednesday attacked the government for excluding live-in couples, single men and the LGBTQ community from the ambit of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2021, attacking the legislation as “discriminatory” and “patriarchal”.

Congress member Karti P Chidambaram, who opened the debate on the Bill, said: “This law is not a Hindu law, it is actually a Victorian law.”

He invoked the Mahabharata and the Puranas several times, saying: “Our epics have so many instances of unconventional births.”

“This law has not come from the Hindu liberal traditions. This law has come from the completely regressive, Victorian, and colonial mindset. I will tell you why. This law excludes many people, rather than it includes. When I have given you so many instances of unconventional births and unconventional unions in our Hindu epics, this law only allows married people to have access to this technology. It does not allow LGBTQ people to have access to this technology. It does not allow single men to have access to this technology,” Karti Chidambaram said adding that the bill is “discriminatory”.

Karti said: “This law does not take into account the new realities of India. Of course, these new realities are not new realities. These were there in our ancient scriptures. Those unions which were always there, were suppressed by the colonial mentality. These unions must also be given access to this technology. The LGBTQ population, live-in couples, and single men must also have access to this technology if they want so.”

Maeve’s law will legalise partial DNA donations, allowing women to give birth without passing on a genetic disease

Members of parliament have voted to legalise controversial mitochondrial donation in the first conscience vote since same-sex marriage in 2017.

The legislation, known as Maeve’s law, will legalise partial DNA donations, allowing women to give birth without passing on a genetic disease.

The bill amended the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction Act 2002 (Cth), and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002 (Cth), and was subject to a conscience vote.

It passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday night, 92 votes to 29.

Thiruvananthapuram: Even as the state government has claimed that it

was standing beside Anupama S Chandran in her fight to get her missing

child back, the CPM has dragged itself into a fresh controversy.

At least two leaders of the party, including minister Saji Cherian, have

made controversial statements against Anupama and her partner Ajith

Shown Here:

Agreed to Senate (11/30/2021)

117th CONGRESS

1st Session

S. RES. 464

It was a warm September morning and the house of an employee of the Northern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Ltd was decked up for a small yet intimate religious ceremony in the small village. It was a joyous occasion for the man, in his forties, and his wife. A long wait for the couple to adopt a child had finally come true—this was to be the ‘homecoming’ of a 10-year-old boy the couple had ‘adopted’ a few days earlier from a care home in Mumbai. But the story didn’t have a happy ending. A police team swooped on the house that day and arrested the man on charges of kidnapping—the boy he had adopted was found to have been kidnapped from Mumbai earlier. The man landed in jail, though he claims he was the victim of an elaborate racket.

Last year, a man in Mumbai found out that his three children—put in a childcare home run by a well-known charity after the death of their mother—have been adopted by an American couple without his knowledge. He has been fighting a legal battle since then. His case may be not exactly of fraud as the charity had put out newspaper notices about the plan to put up the three children for adoption. But for many others, it has been a nightmarish experience after being taken for a ride by organised gangs.

Experts and activists say the main reason for adoption frauds are India’s complicated laws and their cumbersome implementation process due to which couples desperate to adopt children often look for unauthorised channels. India tightened its adoption rules after cases emerged of parents being coerced or tricked to give up their children for inter-country adoptions. And the involvement of doctors, nurses and orphanage officials in a racket that runs into crores of rupees annually makes it all the more difficult for unsuspecting couples in ­detecting fraudulent deals. Sometimes, of course, couples go ahead despite being aware of the illegal nature of the adoption process.

Ashok Chand, a former deputy commissioner of police (crime) who had unearthed at least three adoption rackets in Delhi around 2010, says that racketeers have more or less the same modus operandi in which they either buy ­children from poor parents or ask them to ­conceive and hand over the newborn to needy parents in return for money.

“One gang had four members, including two women, a doctor and another man. The women were operating the racket in the garb of ­running NGOs,” Chand says.

“Oh, you are here. Nayantara is getting ready still. Please wait here in the office”. As we entered the Director’s chamber in the children’s centre in an industrial part of north Delhi on that crisp Nov­ember morning a dozen years ago, the mom­ents of waiting for Nayantara seemed to stretch out interminably. Then right in the middle of our half-hearted small talk with the official-looking people in the room, we stopped in mid-sentence as we heard a tiny roar of voices and a swift swoosh as the curtains parted. A bun­dled baby was carried proudly into the room by a beaming nurse. I could see a nice head of hair that had been abundantly and freshly oiled, the smallest of noses, and a light blue cotton onesie with little cars and trains printed on it, no doubt picked out for the spec­ial occasion. My cousin Vatsala’s sage voice rang in my ears. “Didda, don’t get put off by the hair oil”. Before I knew it, Nayantara was in my arms, and I was almost blinded by her million-­watt smile and the spray of dimples all over her face. “She looks just like you”, said the adoption officer triumphantly. Did she know I used to dream of a girl with dimples?

Not because of, but perhaps in spite of what the adoption officer told me, I find myself ever so

often tracing my fingers across my daughter’s face while she sleeps gently next to me. I marvel

at her perfect little nose that has now filled out, her shapely light-brown eyebrows, her

lengthening body, and the fading blue birthmarks that once took up the entirety of her back.

Though the committee members have been at the receiving end of cyber bullying ever since they formed a platform to support the cause, what prompted them to approach the police was a fake petition.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Perturbed by relentless cyber bullying, the solidarity committee formed to support Anupama S Chandran and her partner Ajith Kumar in the child adoption case has lodged a complaint with the state police chief demanding action against the culprits.

Though the committee members have been at the receiving end of cyber bullying ever since they formed a platform to support the cause, what prompted them to approach the police top boss was a fake petition, which was circulated maliciously on various social media platforms urging the CM to provide a government job to Ajith.

The post bore the names of all activists, who have been part of Anupama-Ajith Solidarity Committee as signatories. Social activist P Usha, who is a member of the committee, said the organisation as well as the individuals who were named in the post have filed separate police complaints.

“On my complaint, I got a response that the Thiruvananthapuram city police commissioner will look into the matter. Other activists too have filed police complaints. Apart from the couple, the activists who stood up for them have also been subjected to vicious online attacks. This is a dangerous trend,” she said.

The sector is such a popular target for these locust capitalists because of the good chances of high returns

By: Lilian Marijnissen and Peter Kwint

Our youth services are not doing well. In recent years – after a decentralization under Rutte-2 that was accompanied by a major cutback – youth care has become more expensive, waiting lists have grown and the staff shortage has increased. Half of all newly trained youth care workers will leave the sector within two years. The youth care workers will go on strike next Monday, in protest against the increasing workload and the rapidly growing staff shortage.

Nevertheless, the sector is very popular in some places. Private equity funds – so-called springcock capitalists or venture capitalists, depending on who you ask – see youth care as 'an interesting growth market'. For example, the mental health organization Mentaal Beter recently fell into the hands of the French investment company Apax. Another provider was taken over by Holland Capital. Apax owns companies worth a billion or 50. They owned De Persgroep, Tommy Hilfiger and the software company Exact. Clearly people with a passion for youth care. The fact that they use youth care as a profit model is not a natural phenomenon, but a consequence of allowing the market in youth care. We also see this happening in elderly care and childcare, where private equity is now the order of the day.

The earnings model of these looters roughly consists of three possibilities. You can buy a company with borrowed money, hang that debt on the company, sell profitable parts and bankrupt the rest, you can add as much value as possible to a company in the short term and then sell it for a profit, or you can skim dividends , briefly summarized. You can find all kinds of things about that and we have previously seen at V&D and childcare organization Estro what consequences this can have.

My Story

I believe we all have a story, and more than that – we all have a purpose, and it’s the journey that makes us great. Living a life driven by my values, my goal is to leave a legacy that lasts.

To lead people and organisations with wisdom, courage and understanding knowing that fulfilment in life comes from WHO we are, not what we do. And that kind of legacy, will impact generations to come.

My story started here: born in the slums of India, to a woman who didn’t want me. Abandoned on the steps of a hospital, left for dead. Unloved, unwanted and prisoner to the caste system that hands down a life sentence of poverty on its victims.

From the outside it appears as though I should have lived an impoverished, uneducated life. I should have been one of the billions living each day forced to fight for survival. That should have been me. But it wasn’t. Because I was saved by a charitable act. Adopted by a family in Australia who chose to give up their money, their time, their love and welcome me into their family. Fighting all odds, bureaucracy, red tape and financial hurdles, they took me in, loved me as their own and taught me how an act of selflessness can make a life-altering difference in the world. This is my story. And today, it’s what drives me. What my parents did for one I want to do for many. Showing people that they can live a life defined by who they are, not by what they do or where they’ve come from. The past doesn’t have to determine your future because it’s the journey that makes us great.