-This two months and five days old child was born in PJMCH, Dumka... -60 days ago the mother had applied to the committee to surrender the child...

CWC (Child Welfare Committee) has declared a baby born in PJMC Hospital, Dumka as legally free for adoption in record time. The child's mother had applied to CWC to surrender the child after being discharged from the hospital four days after delivery. The committee had accommodated the child in a girls' home along with his mother. During the reconsideration period of 60 days, the woman was given counseling four times in which she was explained that she should keep the child, but she continued to refuse to adopt him. Finally, on Tuesday, the child and his mother were presented before the Bench of Magistrate comprising Chairperson Dr. Amarendra Kumar, members Ranjan Kumar Sinha, Dr. Raj Kumar Upadhyay and Kumari Bijay Lakshmi. The mother put a stamp on the deed of surrender of her son, while the Panchayat head and the maid put their signatures as witnesses.

The committee executed the surrender deed and declared the child legally free for adoption. An order has been given to expedite the legal process of adopting the child by accommodating him in a specialized adoption institution and uploading his details in Carings. The process of this child's mother coming to CWC, birth and adoption of the child is also historical. In fact, when a widow became pregnant, her family and society harassed her and threw her out. In such a situation, a female head of Sadar block gave protection to the pregnant woman and informed the committee about it. From the security point of view, the committee registered the case of this aborted child and lodged the woman in a children's home (girls' home) located at Dhadhakiya. Due to labor pain in the nursery, the woman was admitted to PJMCH, where she gave birth to a healthy baby. After the child is legally freed by the committee, the child will be adopted as per the rules and procedure of adoption to any one of the approximately 30 thousand couples registered under CARA (Central Adoption Resource Authority). This child will get all the legal rights in the same way as any child gets from his biological parents. Chairperson Dr. Amarendra Kumar said that the committee is also making all efforts to rehabilitate this woman with her family

Nagpur Illegal adoption of Girl: Bajajnagar police have registered a case against a couple for illegally adopting an eight-month-old girl. In this case, the police have detained the baby and handed it over to the Child Welfare Committee. Interestingly, the matter came to light only on the complaint made by the wife.

The names of the couple are Dipen Horilal Majumdar and Preeti Dipen Majumdar (Rest.Jaripatka). According to police, a few months ago Dipen and his wife adopted an eight-month-old baby from a poor family in Pune with the help of a person from Pune. He took custody of the baby only by notarizing it.

However, within a month, an argument started between Deepen and Preeti. As a result of that dispute, Dipen gave her to Sonal Patel, who lives in Laxminagar, for upbringing. Meanwhile, Preeti Majumdar went to his house and demanded the baby. However, she categorically refused to give the baby, saying that her husband had given the baby for adoption. (Latest Marathi News)

So Preeti approached the Police Commissionerate and demanded that the baby be adopted there and be given custody of it. Therefore, the Commissioner of Police ordered the Bajajnagar Police to investigate the matter. While investigating, the police summoned Sonal Patel and questioned him. After they informed about this, the police asked Preeti for the documents of adoption of the baby.

SAMBALPUR : The baby girl rescued from an abandoned borewell pit in Rengali’s Laripali was discharged from VIMSAR, Burla and handed over to the district child protection unit (DCPU) on Thursday. After her rescue on December 12, the baby named Bijayini has been receiving dedicated medical care at VIMSAR’s special newborn care unit (SNCU) for the last month.

VIMSAR superintendent Lal Mohan Nayak said the baby’s condition improved remarkably during her treatment. Her weight has increased from 1.6 kg to 2.2 kg in the last month and she is free from all infections. “The baby was deemed fit to be discharged after doctors were able to feed her normally. We had to let her go with a heavy heart. But we would keep track of her health and growth besides being available for all sorts of medical emergencies,” Nayak added.

An officer of DCPU Babita Kar said the baby has been sent to the special adoption agency of Rukmini Lath Bal Niketan at Chhachanpali where nurses will take care of her. “As the baby is still in need of special care, the nurses of Bal Niketan have been trained at the hospital. A few guidelines have to followed to ascertain if there are any claimants of the abandoned baby.”

Official sources said the DCPU will publish advertisement in newspapers along with the photograph of the baby girl. If no claimants turn up within 60 days, the baby will be legally free for adoption. The baby was two days old when she was found trapped in the 13-foot-deep borewell pit by villagers. After a marathon operation lasting eight hours, she was rescued from the pit by local fire services personnel and teams of ODRAF and OSAP 2nd Battalion.

Earlier, Sambalpur police had informed that the baby’s biological parents were identified a few days after the incident. Her mother is currently undergoing treatment at SCB Medical College and Hospital, Cuttack for postpartum depression.

Hubballi: Two couples from the US and one from Canada recently adopted three specially abled orphan children from the District Child Protection Unit here. Currently, there are 11 orphans at this unit. In the last three years, the unit had received seven abandoned children and rescued another 21.According to sources, of the three foreign couples, one was childless. Fifteen couples from Maharashtra, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh have also adopted abandoned children. To enhance child safety, cradles have been placed at Guntigeri, Hubballi and other locations so that people do not abandon infants near trees, by the roadside, near drains and such other places.To streamline adoption procedures for orphans, abandoned and surrendered children, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has been given the status of a statutory body to enable it to perform its functions more effectively. Adoption processes have been streamlined with fixed timelines for both in-country as well as inter-country adoptions, including declaring a child legally free for adoption. Neeta Wadkar, the district child protection officer, told STOI the government has given an opportunity to couples and single parents to apply for adoption on the CARA website. The process involves completion of certain legal formalities as well.According to Wadkar, inter-country adoption is on the rise. At six-month intervals, door visits are conducted to check on the condition of adopted children and collect all relevant data on them. “Usually, couples have to wait for a minimum of two years to adopt a child and adoptions are allowed only after running a thorough check on the prospective parent or parents,” she added.Prakash Kodliwad, a child protection officer, said: “We are creating awareness on legal adoption and the procedures that need to be followed. During awareness campaigns, members of the public are also warned on the consequences of illegal adoption.”

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.

Henk-Jan as a baby, 1978

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.

In Pakistan, police have busted a child trafficking ring. They ran a black market for babies. Doctors, nurses and the clinics themselves had a hand in it. But many of the children will never return to their real parents.
 

After the birth of her son, Nusrat Khela Orakzai was overjoyed. The Pakistani woman and her husband now had two sons and two daughters. Perfect, they thought. But the happiness only lasted three days. The newborn was taken to a clinic in the nearest larger city, Peshawar, because of jaundice - and kidnapped from his hospital bed.

"If he had died, I could go to his grave and cry. That would be easier - but like this..." says Orakzai and bursts into tears. Since that terrible day a year and a half ago, not a moment has passed when she hasn't thought about her son. 

The family hasn't given up looking for the boy. The little one probably fell into the hands of baby traffickers - not an isolated case in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, a poor province in northern Pakistan : the police are looking for hundreds of missing children there.

In 2016, I began to take initial steps to begin searching for biological relatives. This process initially involved seeing a therapist with adoption expertise and trying to locate other Indian adoptees who had conducted their root searches. Over the next two years I uncovered stories that showed me which paths I could follow and who out there were leading the way. I quickly realized that, just as I needed a therapist to help me process the emotional complexity of searching, I needed a guide in India too.

For that reason, I started looking for organizations that were seasoned in conducting searches in India. I witnessed second-hand a few searches that other adoptees conducted on their own, oftentimes without even interpreters, and although I applaud their courage, knew I could not do the same myself. I was quite fearful that given the social stigma against having a child out of wedlock that if I were to initiate my search without guidance on how to do so sensitively, I could harm the very people was looking for.

To complicate matters, India, as a country and its central government, let alone each state, did not provide support for returning adoptees to search for their roots, in contrast to some countries with high historical occurrences of intercountry adoption. This means adoptees are on their own to search by themselves or to hire an organization to help them. In my case, I have been fortunate to have access to many records related to my adoption which meant my task was to validate those records, rather than try to gain access to them. This focus meant I was less in need of a lawyer to petition my case to my orphanage or adoption agency and more in need of navigators to help explore the details in the files I already had.

With these items in mind, I settled on negotiating a contract with two organizations that work together, the Adoptees Right Council (ARC) and Against Child Trafficking (ACT). They are, run by Anjali Pawar and Arun Dohle. According to ARC’s website they are focused on “the rights of adult Indian adoptees and searches.” ACT, in contrast, is focused on “the prevention of child trafficking for intercountry adoption. ACT advocates child rights based social policies that are in compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the universal standard and the best safeguard against child trafficking.”

I have come to believe in the missions of each organization. I belief that intercountry adoption is a version of child trafficking and should be eliminated entirely. I also belief that adoptees need support in searching for their roots if they so choose. In an ideal world this would be funded by the government of both countries involved in the initial adoption. That, however, is not the case, hence the need for organizations like ARC and ACT to step in and provide these services. I wish there were a dozen organizations who were as well equipped and seasoned as ARC and ACT, but there are very few options for Indian adoptees unfortunately.

The newborn was rescued from the drain by a couple—Shivaji and Jayashree Ragade—on December 30, 2018. Till the time of his adoption, the Ragade couple looked after all his requirements

Ambernath: Tiger, now four-year-old, who was abandoned in a drain in Ambernath hours after his birth, on Friday got a new home and set of parents after he was adopted by an Italian couple.

The couple visited Vishwa Balak Kendra in Nerul and flew back with Tiger.

The newborn was rescued from the drain by a couple—Shivaji and Jayashree Ragade—on December 30, 2018. Till the time of his adoption, the Ragade couple looked after all his requirements.

The Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans, and Youth Rehabilitation has dismissed  a joint statement from human rights organisations requesting the governments of Cambodia and Italy to cease foreign adoption to avoid a revival of fraud that was common in previous adoption cases.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, four NGOs pleaded with the governments of Italy and Cambodia to halt initiatives that would reopen the international adoption market.

These non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were the Intercountry Adoptee Voices, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, and the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (Licadho).

These civil society organisations say that Cambodia stopped transnational adoption in 2009 after numerous reports of unethical acts related to adoption. Many countries banned adoption from Cambodia during the 2000s. But in recent months, Italy and Cambodia have begun to take steps to resume adoptions from Cambodia.

Discussing our personal experiences as Korean adoptees, we noticed that communicating in a language that is not our own can be a barrier . The reality is that today, many organizations offer numerous services to adoptees but to access them you often need to be able to communicate in English.

In terms of communication, we have observed that there is a general lack of sharing of information and news among those responsible for the main associations of French-speaking adoptees. We have also witnessed the propagation and sharing of certain rumors or erroneous information (sometimes even false) on social networks. It is true that South Korea is evolving very quickly in terms of legislative elections, which can make certain procedures more difficult. This also makes it difficult to be aware of all the latest advances and information such as the F4 Visa, access to dual nationality and even the search for biological family to name just a few examples.

Additionally, as many already know, traveling alone in Korea can be complicated. It is for all these reasons that we consider it important that all French-speaking adoptees as well as French-speaking adoptee associations can benefit from the latest information and news, in the same way as if they were on site in South Korea or if they were able to get by in English.