The people of the General Secretariat work across and for the continued success of the entire ISS global network

Jean Ayoub - Secretary General & CEO

With a beginning in the Red Cross as a volunteer, Jean Ayoub became operations director during the Lebanese civil war. He then served on several field missions for the International Red Cross before relocating to Geneva to re-design and supervise Red Cross Red Crescent response to worldwide natural disasters as Director of Operations and IFRC Director of Cooperation and Development.

Jean went off then to Paris as the Director General for the French Telethon to refocus systems and teams on the main vision and mission of the Telethon umbrella association (AFM). Starting 2005 he worked several years as an independent advisor, consulting mainly on turnaround management situations and leadership coaching.

Jean is currently and since 2008 the Secretary General and CEO of International Social Service (ISS) driving with a dream team the full transformation of the organisation ahead of its 100th anniversary in 2024.

LONDON, United Kingdom — The past few decades have seen an upsurge in the phenomenon of “paper orphaning.” Children are taken illicitly from their birthparents and are falsely presented as orphans by means of fraudulent documentation, rendering the children “legally” adoptable to satisfy the demand for intercountry adoptions. This demand, mainly from couples in developed countries wanting to adopt from the Global South, combined with the adoption fees associated, results in recruiters in sending nations using illicit means to generate a sufficient supply of “adoptable” children, or illegal orphans. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, illegal intercountry adoption is a human rights issue as the act violates several human rights and has “devastating consequences on the lives and rights of victims.” Intercountry adoption processes must at all times consider the best interests of the child. The Borgen Project spoke to Professor David Smolin, director of Cumberland School of Law’s Center for Children, Law and Ethics on the topic of illegal intercountry adoptions.

False Promises and Financial Incentives

Through coercive tactics such as deception, bribery or even abduction, wily recruiters obtain children from impoverished, vulnerable families and sometimes even pregnant women, a research article by Griffith University law lecturer Kathryn E. van Doore discusses. These recruiters promise better opportunities for the children, such as a good education, and tell parents that they can see them during the holidays. There are further incentives such as financial or other rewards. Many parents, therefore, do not give consent freely but under psychological pressure and/or deception. Sometimes, recruiters take children by force and, in some cases, parents actually pay to relinquish their child.

These children are then legally “adoptable” through the falsification of identities and papers, including falsified birth certificates and death certificates of the parents, and they become “paper orphans.” These incidents have occurred in Nepal, Cambodia, Uganda and Ghana, among others, says Van Doore on a Griffiths University news page.

Paper Orphaning and Poverty

Un siècle d’adoption des enfants en France (1923-2023)

November 28, 2022 - The 'Out-of-home placement' guideline has been revised and sent for authorization to professional associations BPSW, NIP and NVO. After all professional associations have authorized the guideline, we will publish the new guideline on this website. This is expected to be mid-January 2023.

Click here if you would like to receive a notification as soon as the revised guideline is online.

Important changes in the revised guideline

• The revised guideline places a greater emphasis on relocation compared to the current guideline. That is why the name of the guideline has been changed to: Out-of-home placement and return guideline.
• The guideline has a clear focus on 'growing up as at home as possible', including in the case of (temporary) out-of-home placement. This is preferably placed in a (network) foster family or a family home. And where parents remain involved in their child's life as much as possible.
• The guideline has a broader approach with regard to preventing out-of-home placement. And this has been expanded with more interventions to prevent out-of-home placement
• Instead of a proposed acceptable period within which decision-making on out-of-home placement or return should take place, the revised guideline offers a new assessment framework for decision-making on out-of-home placement and return.
• The revised guideline pays much more attention to joint decision-making with parent and child in all steps of decision-making. The basic principle is that decisions about out-of-home placement and return are made together with parents and child as much as possible.
• The directive has a major impact on the family and the uncertainty of the outcome of the decision is great.
• In addition, the guideline pays more attention to the use of the informal network and social support in supporting parents and child.

Review in collaboration with the field

The Archdiocese of Vancouver has released an apology on Mother’s Day weekend for its role in what has been called Canada’s “post-war adoption mandate” that led to the coerced separation of unmarried mothers from their children.

The apology, released Friday, said in 1933 the Archdiocese of Vancouver founded a home for unmarried mothers where many women were pressured to give up their babies. 

The Our Lady of Mercy Home for unmarried mothers, under the direction of the Superintendent of Child Welfare of the Province of British Columbia, was located at 54th Avenue and Oak Street in Vancouver and offered unwed pregnant mothers “a place to stay, arrangements for medical care, counselling, financial planning, and temporary foster care for those who needed time to plan their future and make decisions about the care of their child, including adoption.”

The archdiocese’s apology said, “We now know that many of these mothers faced pressures that adoption was the only choice.”

The archdiocese’s role “in any pressured and coerced adoptions created a legacy of pain and suffering,” said the statement. “We contributed to a culture of shame, guilt and secrecy, which often led to pain and isolation.”

“How do I tell my daughter that her stepbrother is actually her father?” No, this is not a preview of the season finale of Thuis. It's a question an American woman really asks herself. She asked the 'therapist' of The Atlantic magazine for advice.

Every family has its secrets, but that of this anonymous woman from the United States is very special. In the column 'Dear therapist' she wonders how to tell her now 30-year-old daughter that the man she thinks is her father is actually her grandfather, and that the man she thinks is her stepbrother is, in reality, her real father. Can you still follow?

Actually it is less complex than it seems. When the woman met her husband more than thirty years ago, it quickly became clear that they wanted a child together. The only problem was that the man, who already had two children from a previous relationship, had already had a vasectomy performed. Too long ago to be reversible. And so the couple had to look for a sperm donor.

“We didn't want to use a sperm bank, so we asked my husband's son to be the donor,” the woman writes in her reader's letter. “It seemed like the best solution to us: our child would have my husband's genes and we knew my stepson's health, personality and intelligence. He agreed to help.”

“Our daughter is now 30. My husband and I are anxious, confused and worried about telling her,” she adds. “This is especially difficult for my husband, because he wants our daughter to know that he will always be her father.”

Enfants roumains évaporés en France

3/10/2007

Bucarest dénonce la disparition de mineurs roumains hospitalisés en France.

Les autorités de Bucarest ont indiqué vendredi 27 février avoir dénoncé la disparition d’enfants roumains pris en charge par des associations pour être hospitalisés en France, et dont les parents seraient sans nouvelles depuis des années.

La secrétaire d’Etat, chargée de la protection de l’enfance, Gabriela Coman a en effet déclaré devant une commission parlementaire que des enfants de Roumanie, qui ont été envoyés en France pour des traitements médicaux en 1997 et 1998 ne sont plus jamais revenus dans leur pays.

The case of children who left for treatment and did not return to the country

child

Several children left Romania for treatment abroad

The National Authority for Child Protection will check under what conditions they left Romania, for several years, based on medical certificates recommending treatment abroad. The cases were reported by the newspaper "Gândul".

It would be about children who left the country for treatment through humanitarian organizations, one of them being SERA (Solidarite Enfants Roumains Abandonnes).

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