Flanders stops intercountry adoptions from Vietnam. An initial screening round of five countries of origin shows that there are insufficient guarantees that malpractice with adoptions from Vietnam is excluded, concludes Flemish Minister of Health and Welfare Hilde Crevits. The light is green for adoptions from Portugal, Colombia and South Africa. There will be an additional site visit for Kazakhstan. The screening of 15 other countries of origin is still ongoing.

After reports of malpractice with intercountry adoptions from Ethiopia in 2019, the Flemish government decided to set up an expert panel on intercountry adoptions. After the publication of the final report of that panel, former Minister of Welfare Wouter Beke (CD&V) decided to have the cooperation with all countries of origin screened. This screening, in which adoptees and the intercountry adoption services were also heard, was supposed to help prevent abuses in the future.

Five countries were part of the first round of screening: Portugal, Colombia, South Africa, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. The screening gave the green light for Portugal, Colombia and South Africa. Adoption cooperation remains possible for those countries. Kazakhstan turns orange. This means that an on-site visit is necessary before a final decision can be made.

Red for Vietnam

The light is on red for one country: Vietnam. "There is too little confidence to be able to say that abuses can be ruled out," says Minister Crevits. "That says nothing about past adoptions, but new adoptions are excluded.”

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Candidate adoptive parents are available for children from Turkey and Syria. Not a good idea, academics write.

In The Seventh Day last Sunday, a Belgian-Turkish entrepreneur who traveled to Turkey to provide assistance after the earthquake testified. He outlined the extent of the damage and what is needed at this time. His report was announced on the VRT website under the title 'Saïd testifies from Turkey: There are many orphans. I'm looking at adopting.” Said did indeed say that, but it was not his full message. In the meantime, the title of the piece has changed, and rightly so. Because no matter how sincere and well-intentioned, his comment about adoption was inappropriate.

Let's return to the spring of 2019. Then the Flemish Parliament organized a hearing on fraud in adoptions from Ethiopia. This showed that the government and adoption services have failed to protect children adopted in Belgium from other countries. Some files even contain lies or fraud. How could that happen? Pressure from well-meaning citizens to help children out of poverty. Insufficient attention to the interests of those children. Many people in their thirties and forties who were adopted from India as children , and many people in their twenties who were adopted from Ethiopia as children, have already testified about their difficult identity formation and the frustrating search for their roots. Many wondered not only why their biological parents could not care for them, but also why they were taken abroad when there were also shelters in their native country.

FRANKSVILLE, Wis. (CBS 58) -- On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, Josue Gonzalez, 11, Darwin Gonzalez, 9, and Abraham Gonzalez, 6, happily kick around a soccer ball in a Franksville playground. 

But this simple trip to the park has been more than two years in the making. 

The three brothers spent the last five years living in an orphanage in Ecuador. 

Little did they know, their home would soon be found in Wisconsin.

“When we first found out that we weren’t going to have biological children, adoption was our first choice," Nicole Gonzalez told CBS 58's Ellie Nakamoto-White. 

She fainted from shock when she learned that her son had been adopted to Norway, the South Korean woman wrote to the Ministry of Children and Families. When she did not get an answer, she traveled to Norway.

It was in 2005 that the woman wrote an email to the ministry:

"Please let me - a poor woman living in a life full of tears and regrets - live."

In the email, the 45-year-old woman told how she was forced to divorce her husband.

She thought she was doing the best for her son, by letting him live with his biological father and his family, she writes.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syrian troops have arrested five people in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon on charges of kidnapping and selling a number of children for $500 each, police said Wednesday.

Police said a Syrian patrol in the Bekaa Valley caught Haitham Nasereddine, 27, as he was trying to snatch a baby from the Al Habshi family as it played in front of the family home in the village of Deir Al Ahmar, east of Beirut.

The Syrian troops handed over Haitham to Lebanese authorities, they said. Haitham confessed that he and four other people formed a gang for kidnapping children, they said.

The kidnapped children later were delivered to George Fouad Abu Jawdeh, who owns a snack shop in the Christian resort of Broumana, 12 miles east of Beirut, for $500 for each child.

The detainees said Abu Jawdeh funded the gang and handled the sales, police said but gave no other details about the number of kidnapped children and their location.

Chandigarh: The Chandigarh administration has notified ‘Chandigarh Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Amendment Rules, 2023’. The amendment has come subsequent to the notification of Rules by the Union government on September 1, 2022. The provisions laid under amended Rules 2022 have been adopted by the UT.A UT spokesperson said, “The recent amendment in the Rules has simplified and strengthened the procedure of child adoption by vesting the powers in district magistrate (DM) for issuing orders in cases of in-country/inter-country/relative/step parent adoption in order to ensure speedy disposal of cases. Previously, the adoption orders were passed by the district court as per Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Model Rules, 2016.”The amended rules also empower the district magistrate along with additional deputy magistrate to monitor the functioning of agencies under the Act such as child welfare committee, Juvenile Justice Board and special juvenile police unit. The said monitoring will ensure that all agencies are adhering to the norms laid under the Act, subsequently, preventing any kind of violation of provisions of the act.Another significant amendment in the Rules envisages immediate investigation by the Police (Rule 55 A & 57 A) in cases where child is being used for begging & labour before registration of an FIR.In addition to the above mentioned amendments, any affected child or anyone connected with the child may file grievance arising out of the functioning of child welfare committee before the district magistrate.

Another significant amendment in the Rules envisages immediate investigation by the police (Rule 55 A & 57 A) in cases where a child is being used for begging and labour even before registration of an FIR.

The UT administration Saturday notified the Chandigarh Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Amendment Rules, 2023 subsequent to the notification of Rules by the Central Government on September 1, 2022.

The provisions laid under the Amended Rules, 2022 have been fully adopted in Chandigarh, the administration added. A senior officer said that the recent amendment in the rules has simplified and strengthened the procedure of child adoption by vesting the powers of taking decisions with the District Magistrate, who is the Deputy Commissioner, for issuing of orders in cases of In-country/Inter-Country/Relative/Step Parent Adoption in order to ensure speedy disposal of such cases.

Previously, the adoption orders were passed by the only District Court as per Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Model Rules 2016.

Meanwhile, the amended rules also empowers the District Magistrate along with Additional Deputy Magistrate to monitor the functioning of agencies such as Child Welfare Committee, Juvenile Justice Board and Special Juvenile Police Unit. The said monitoring will ensure that all the agencies are adhering to the norms laid under the Act, subsequently, preventing any kind of violation of provisions of the Act.

Henk-Jan was adopted by a Dutch family as a baby. Only years later did he hear from Nelleke, the woman who brought him from Indonesia to the Netherlands, that this trip was not completely legal. On the contrary: he was quite lucky both in Jakarta and at Schiphol. 

Henk-Jan (45) : 'When I was nineteen years old, Nelleke contacted me. I hadn't seen her since she brought me to the Netherlands, and I can't remember anything about that trip. I only knew her from the photos I still had. In the late 1970s (when I was born), private adoption agencies were still allowed to carry out adoption mediations, but nowadays this is only allowed through government-appointed organizations. Nelleke – a Dutch expat – ran her own adoption agency from Jakarta. The fact that she found me after all these years is quite amazing, because over the years my first and last name have changed twice. My parents invited her, and we met in the backyard. Here she told me the story about my adoption.

My adoptive parents were a childless couple from Drenthe. My father Henk was a lieutenant in the Royal Dutch Army, and my mother Robin worked as a nurse and freelance journalist. Before my adoption, they had already tried twice to adopt a child from Taiwan, because friends had also adopted two Taiwanese children. Unfortunately, one died before the adoption was finalized, and in the other case, the birth mother withdrew from the process at the last minute. In addition to the many miscarriages that Henk and Robin previously suffered, these were major disappointments to process. Robin's father had previously served in the Royal Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) and therefore said that an Indonesian baby might be nice. How lucky for me! So I got the third try.

Things got tense for a moment: I got pneumonia, which meant the crossing had to be postponed for a few months. Fortunately, I recovered, so when the time came, Nelleke wanted to make the crossing as quickly as possible so that Henk and Robin would not have to wait any longer. Yet she did not leave with confidence. She suspected that something was missing from my official documents that she needed to identify me during the trip. After all, as a Dutch woman she could not simply board a plane with an Indonesian child that was not her own - even though human smuggling was already taking place on a large scale. Ultimately, she decided to just catch a plane before anyone found out. She knew that I was already the third attempt for Henk and Robin, and she did not want to cause the couple another disappointment.

Miraculously, she cleared customs in Jakarta without any problems and was eventually on the plane. In the meantime, I cried to all the people on the plane, I was inconsolable (I'm sorry, dear people). Just when Nelleke thought she could relax, a flight attendant's voice came over the loudspeaker: 'Does Nelleke want to report to the crew?' Her heart flew into her throat. Had customs been paying attention after all? She decided to keep quiet and looked out the window "unsuspectingly". Not much later, the pilot announced that he had just received a message that he was not allowed to take off. If everyone would sit quietly, and he would soon come up with further news. Half an hour passed and Nelleke was convinced that they were waiting for her outside the plane to pick her up. 

Eline van der Woude (33) and her husband Sander adopted three sisters from Hungary in one fell swoop. The girls have now been in the Netherlands for 1.5 years. A difficult, time-consuming, but above all valuable process. “Many people ask us if they will stay with us forever.”

Eline shares their story on Instagram and TikTok (@eline.vanderwoude). “It became clear to me that there is still so much unknown about the adoption process ,” she tells LINDA.

MISCARRIAGE

Eline and Sander already have a son together, named Noah (now 10 years old), when the desire for more children arises. “Again I quickly became pregnant. But unfortunately things went wrong after fifteen weeks. Our hearts broke because it was a girl. I always dreamed of one day having a special mother-daughter bond and one day being able to pass on my life lessons as a woman to a daughter. We had never been so sad.” Eline then becomes pregnant twice more, but these pregnancies also end in miscarriage.

During the last pregnancy, Eline had to take pills to induce the miscarriage. While they wait, Eline and her husband watch a documentary about an American couple who adopt three children at the same time. “My heart jumped. I thought: this is it. Then, as I put Noah to bed, I realized that there are millions of children around the world who fall asleep alone, with no one to tell them how loved they are. Every child deserves that,” says Eline. Her husband also thinks adoption would suit them perfectly.

With her second book 'Love from China', former Balk star Tirza Kingma has written a disarming and honest story about the adoption of her son Wen, his growing up with cleft palate and the trips the family made to China.

In 2010, Kingma traveled to southern China with her husband, their two biological daughters and Kingma's mother to adopt Wen. A year earlier he was born in the vicinity of Kunming, the city of eternal spring. He grew up in Friesland, underwent several operations on his cleft palate and followed an intensive speech therapy program. Wen developed into a cheerful and active boy. In the meantime, the family traveled to China twice more, including for a 'roots trip'.

Cleft palate

In 2014, the family traveled around the world to Thailand, Australia and Hong Kong. Kingma: “Wen was five years old and we wanted to introduce him to his native country in a casual way that was not adoption-related. At home, after a wonderful trip, he said: 'I didn't see anyone with a cleft lip in China.' We had seen that he felt at home in Hong Kong, but we had not realized that he had looked at all the faces so intently.”

Personal book