Despite Italy’s economic significance as the Eurozone’s third-largest economy and founding member of the G7 and NATO, the country has struggled to translate its economic power into political influence. Yet, with Giorgia Meloni’s ascent to power, Italy’s approach to foreign policy appears to be evolving. In fact, since the very beginning of her term, Meloni displayed a rather bold approach towards reshaping Italy’s international status.

As the President of the Council of Ministers – analogous to the post of Prime Minister in other countries – Meloni has adopted a distinct posture in addressing issues related to the Southern Mediterranean. Since taking office in October 2022, Meloni has made numerous visits to North Africa, engaging in a diplomatic offensive aimed at reinvigorating Italian policies. In January this year, following in the footsteps of former Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Meloni travelled to Algeria on her first bilateral visit abroad. Algeria is an instrumental country for Italy due to its vast hydrocarbon reserves and geographical proximity.[1] In 2022, Draghi paved the way for Algeria to become Italy’s top energy supplier, replacing Russia and thus allowing for a swift decoupling from Moscow as the Ukraine war rages on and energy prices continue to soar.

Meloni’s posture in Algeria seeks to evidence her willingness to move beyond a mere set of energy memorandums and broaden Italy’s foreign policy to include strategic diplomacy with long-term goals. She described Algeria as Italy’s “most stable, strategic and long-standing” partner in North Africa,[2] and reassured President Tebboune that Italy stands by Algeria. The country has recently felt cornered following Morocco’s joining of the Abraham Accords, a feeling few other countries aside from Italy had the courage to assuage and which had pushed Algeria further towards Russia and China as a result.

Meloni’s activism in North Africa did not end there. The prime minister and her cabinet promoted high-level missions and diplomatic efforts with Libyan government officials, allowing Italy to reap diplomatic wins in the energy field. In January, a few weeks after visiting Algeria, Meloni flew to Tripoli for a meeting with Libya’s UN-backed Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh. The visit led to the signing of an 8 billion US dollars gas deal between Italian energy company Eni and Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC).[3]

Then, in May, Meloni hosted Benghazi militia leader Khalifa Haftar in Rome to discuss the surge in migration;[4] and the following month, she met Dbeibeh to discuss the economy as well as energy and infrastructure projects, stressing the importance of Libyan stability for Italian interests. By discussing political and economic priorities with both Libyan leaders, Meloni seemingly went beyond the transactional approach that Italy (and Europe more broadly) has long adopted vis-à-vis North Africa promoting a more comprehensive framework which seemingly seeks to embrace the region’s own priorities as well.

Similarly, Meloni held several high-level meetings and signed strategic partnerships with Tunisia, a country that currently faces deep economic and political challenges. Since June, Meloni has met with Tunisia’s President Kais Saied three times. Initially aimed at unblocking International Monetary Fund (IMF) funds to help macroeconomic stability in the country, her later visits, which she undertook with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, underscored the need to find long-term solutions to stabilise Tunisian finances while improving migration cooperation. In Tunis, the leaders stressed European support and announced a package of assistance which includes 150 million euro in budgetary support for Tunisia to avert an economic default.[5]

Meloni has framed her Mediterranean diplomacy as part of a broader initiative termed the “Mattei Plan for Africa”.[6] Named after Eni’s founder Enrico Mattei, the initiative seems to be aimed to encourage a holistic approach to dealing with African countries of interest to Italy. It also aims to turn Italy into an energy hub between North Africa and Europe. Through the construction of new pipelines, Italy would become an exporter of both natural gas and hydrogen to countries such as Germany and Austria and the gateway linking North Africa to Central and Northern European countries.[7] Given Europe’s vital role for North African trade, these deals could become pivotal in securing long-term strategic gains for both sides of the Mediterranean.

The specifics of the Mattei Plan remain undisclosed. Very little is known about the plan, and some fear that its true nature is simply linked to the goal of curbing irregular migration to Italy. In fact, Meloni’s stance on migration has long been a controversial topic of discussion in Italy, one that has awarded her criticism from state authorities and segments of the public at large.

It is through this lens that the international community should view Meloni’s proactive diplomacy in North Africa. Alongside the energy and economic priorities, the issue of irregular migration has always managed to creep onto the agenda through the back door. On Libya, Meloni discussed the issue at length with both Haftar and Dbeibeh, and Italy has recently donated five vessels to the Libyan coastguard in Tripoli to enhance security operations in the Mediterranean.[8] In Tunisia, Meloni shied away from making any public statements on President Kais Saied’s reversals of the country’s fragile democratic transition.[9] Instead, during her visit with von der Leyen and Rutte to Tunisia, the three European leaders announced the immediate release of 105 million euro to assist the Tunisian coastguard and border police.[10]

Whether Giorgia Meloni’s Mattei Plan truly seeks to help alleviate poverty and exploitation in Africa through comprehensive and holistic approaches remains to be seen, and Tunisia might hold the keys to this verdict.

Indeed, the real litmus test for Meloni’s Mattei Plan for Africa is the developing situation in Tunisia, once considered the only successful case of democracy emanated from the so-called Arab Spring. Post-revolution elites in Tunisia did not operate successfully in managing the economy or the social development of the country and actually brought it to the verge of collapse by the end of 2018. The delegitimisation of the political class became evident in the 2021 presidential elections, when the vast majority voted for the outsider and relatively unknown constitutional law professor, Kais Saied, and his programme of state renewal and anticorruption.

Saied took the wishes of his electorate to the extreme and by December 2022 centralised most powers around his person, becoming a de facto authoritarian ruler. Meanwhile, as conditions worsened in the country and the Tunisian president himself increasingly scapegoated black African migrants in Tunisia, many opted for the solution of last resort: emigration to Europe. The number of illegal migrants, mostly of non-Tunisian origin, reaching Italian shores rose almost threefold by July 2023.[11] Tunisia, meanwhile, gradually replaced Libya as the major departure point for migrants seeking to reach Europe via Italy.[12]

As a consequence, the Meloni government ultimately replicated past attempts to address illegal migration: it revived the classical transactional approach of providing resources to North African authorities in exchange for cracking down on smugglers who facilitated illegal crossings.

Yet, Italy’s previous policies, such as those adopted in Libya since 2017, have proven ineffective. Ultimately, they have empowered smugglers and their associates within North African security forces, while not resolving the issue of migrant crossings and severely damaging Italian and European moral credibility in the process.[13] The lack of effective governance in Libya allowed smugglers to exploit the situation and continue their activities by extorting the government for financial gain. Moreover, migrants who were returned to Libya often endured harsh conditions, including detention, exploitation and abuse in Libyan facilities. These conditions, consequently, drove migrants to reattempt the perilous journey again, perpetuating a cycle of smuggling and irregular migration.

For Giorgia Meloni’s vision of a “virtuous model of collaboration and growth” between the EU and African countries[14] to succeed, Tunisia’s fate will be decisive. Tackling the migration issue requires comprehensive solutions that address the root causes of migration: poverty, conflict and lack of opportunities. Failing to do so may result in a serious migration crisis, which no amount of coastguard financing can avert.

The coming trip of Meloni to Washington DC carries important significance in the sense that it can help reiterate the strategic importance of North Africa to the US and its vital significance for the EU. Meloni has the chance of convincing US President Joe Biden to invert trends of US retrenchment from the Mediterranean and recognising the important role allies like Italy can play in the region as Washington contends with other competing priorities. A wider involvement of the US administration may also help to ensure that any new European-led approach to the Mediterranean carries within it a strong commitment to human rights and the rule of law. Such elements will prove indispensable for the success of Meloni’s new activism in the Mediterranean – including the much-awaited Mattei Plan for Africa – and in improving EU policies and credibility in the area as well.


Karim Mezran is Director of the North Africa Initiative and Resident Senior Fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. Alissa Pavia is Associate Director at the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Program.

[1] Benjamin Dodman, “Italy Plays on Historic Heartstrings with Algeria to Boost Critical Energy Ties”, in France 24, 23 January 2023, https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20230123-italy-plays-on-historic-heartstrings-with-algeria-to-boost-critical-energy-ties.

[2] Colleen Barry and Andrea Rosa, “Algeria, Italy Look to Broaden Ties Beyond Coveted Energy”, in AP News, 23 January 2023, https://apnews.com/cc5bd14001637f121ecc46e9b0a700dc.

[3] Gavin Jones, “Italy’s Eni Signs $8 Billion Libya Gas Deal as PM Meloni Visits Tripoli”, in Reuters, 29 January 2023, http://reut.rs/3wCNEnq.

[4] “Meloni and Haftar Talk Migrant Flows to Italy”, in Ansa, 4 May 2023, https://www.ansa.it/english/news/world/2023/05/04/meloni-and-haftar-talk-migrant-flows-to-italy_df89a23d-ecff-47e3-b20d-bd54ef6e461c.html.

[5] Jorge Liboreiro and Vincenzo Genovese, “The Contentious EU-Tunisia Deal Is Finally Here. But What Exactly Is in It?”, in Euronews, 17 July 2023, https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/07/17/the-contentious-eu-tunisia-deal-is-finally-here-but-what-exactly-is-in-it.

[6] Silvia Sciorilli Borrellin, “Italy Renews Its ‘Mattei Plan’ to Develop Energy Ties to Africa”, in Financial Times, 11 January 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/05d17d35-b0c3-47d2-b6b7-6f7d65d758fc.

[7] Francesca Landini, “Italy, Germany, Austria Sign Letter to Support Hydrogen Pipeline”, in Reuters, 9 May 2023, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/italy-germany-austria-sign-letter-support-hydrogen-pipeline-2023-05-09.

[8] Cesare Treccarichi, “Cos’è il Piano Mattei di cui parla tanto Giorgia Meloni”, in Today, 14 April 2023, https://www.today.it/economia/piano-mattei-governo-meloni-africa-gas-cosa-e.html.

[9] “Italy Calls Med Migration Conference on Tunisia Model”, in France 24, 23 July 2023, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230723-italy-calls-med-migration....

[10] Jorge Liboreiro and Vincenzo Genovese, “The Contentious EU-Tunisia Deal Is Finally Here. But What Exactly Is in It?”, cit.; European Commission, EU Comprehensive Partnership Package with Tunisia, 11 June 2023, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/FS_23_3205.

[11] Italian Ministry of the Interior, Cruscotto statistico giornaliero, last updated on 26 July 2023, http://www.interno.gov.it/it/node/8686.

[12] Monica Pinna, “Crisi migranti nel Mediterraneo: dalla Tunisia all’Italia, chi si imbarca verso l’Europa?”, in Euronews, 1 June 2023, https://it.euronews.com/2023/06/01/crisi-migranti-nel-mediterraneo-dalla-tunisia-allitalia-chi-si-imbarca-verso-leuropa.

[13] Alexander Bühler et al., “On the Trail of African Migrant Smugglers”, in Spiegel International, 26 September 2016, https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/migrant-smuggling-business-means-big-money-in-libya-a-1113654.html.

[14] Italian Government, President of the Council of Ministers Giorgia Meloni’s Parliamentary Address on the Government Programme, 25 October 2022, https://www.governo.it/en/node/21000.

Yung Fierens was adopted from South Korea, adoption expert and chairman of the adoption interest group CAFE.

YUNG FIERENS 29 november 2023, 17:02

The lid has once again fallen off the adoption chair. Two years after an expert panel came to devastating conclusions about transnational adoption conditions, the establishment of a project group that had to bend over policy proposals, and even some of these proposed reforms came into existence, we are once again faced with an adoption scandal.

Research showed that several children from Ethiopia were not voluntarily given up by their parents but ended up in Flemish adoptive families through child trafficking. It concerns adoptions that took place between 1996 and 2017.

The Flemish Center for Adoption (VCA) now calls on all adopted people who have doubts about the legality of their adoption to contact us.

The police suspect that over 10 infants have been sold by the gang till now to childless couples.

While the investigations into the child trafficking case in Bengaluru has led to the arrest of three more people in the city, the police have stumbled upon details of an organised crime and said doctors, hospitals and IVF centres may have been a part of the interstate racket.

The police suspect that over 10 infants have been sold by the gang till now to childless couples.

According to the police, a newborn girl used to be sold at Rs 4-5 lakh while a male child fetched Rs 8-10 lakh. Prices dropped for infants of darker complexions.

Among the three new arrestees are Suhasini, Radha and Gomathi, all residents of Erode in Tamil Nadu. The police had earlier arrested Mahalakshmi, Kannan Ramaswamy, Hemalatha, Murugeshwari and Saranya.

In 1955, a special act of Congress allowed Bertha and Harry Holt, an evangelical couple from rural Oregon, to adopt eight Korean War orphans. The Holts had a large family before the adoptions, but they were so moved by their experience that they became pioneers of international adoptions and arranged hundreds for other American couples. They relied on proxy adoptions and overlooked the minimum standards and investigatory practices endorsed by social workers. They honored adopters' specifications for age and sex, gave priority to couples with one or no children, and asked only that applicants be “saved persons” who could pay the cost of children’s airfare from Korea. They paid close attention to race-matching for children whose fathers were African-American, but otherwise ignored it entirely. They were happy to accept couples who had been rejected, for a variety of reasons, by conventional adoption agencies.

The Holts believed they were doing God’s work, but they became lightning rods for controversy about how adoptive families should be made. In the press, the Holts were portrayed as heroic, selfless figures. In Congress, Oregon Senator Richard Neuberger called them incarnations of “the Biblical Good Samaritan.” In Christian communities around the country, their work was held up as a model to be emulated. But many professionals and policy-makers in the U.S. Children’s Bureau, the Child Welfare League of America, and the International Social Service devoted themselves (unsuccessfully) to putting the Holts out of business. They considered the Holts dangerous amateurs, throwbacks to the bad old days of charity and sentiment. Their placements threatened child welfare by substituting religious zeal and haphazard methods for professional skill and supervision.

For the Holts, family-making required faith and altruism, not social work or regulation, and they found nothing wrong with the idea of Americans adopting foreign children, sight unseen. American childhood, they assumed, was unquestionably superior to childhood in developing nations. The Holts' form letter seeking adoptive parents included the following request. “We would ask all of you who are Christians to pray to God that He will give us the wisdom and the strength and the power to deliver his little children from the cold and misery and darkness of Korea into the warmth and love of your homes.” For the Holts and many of their supporters, Korea was a backward country whose children deserved to be rescued.

Many Americans cheered the Holts and found their promises of speedy and uncomplicated adoptions a refreshing alternative to inspection by choosy agencies with waiting lists that could last for years. Pearl S. Buck admired the Holts, even though she disliked their Christian fundamentalism, and shared their suspicion that the professionals who were supposed to be helping children were actually doing them more harm than good. By identifying themselves with suffering children that most people ignored, the Holts reinforced the messages that emerged from popular books like The Family Nobody Wanted. Adoption was an act of faith. Love was enough to make the families that children needed.

By the early 1960s, the Holts responded to pressure from the child welfare establishment. Their operation began to follow standard professional procedures, hired social worker John Adams as its Executive Director in 1962, and gradually evolved into a typical adoption agency. In a little more than a decade, the Holts repeated a pattern central to the history of modern adoption: the movement from humanitarian to professionalism and from religion to science.

Adopting a child from South Korea

Who can adopt?

Please note: South Korea has advised they will not be accepting new applications from Australian prospective adoptive parents in 2023.

Children you can adopt from South Korea

Holt established the first international adoption program in South Korea.

In Korea, children waiting for permanent, loving families are typically 2-3 years old at the time they join their adoptive families and have moderate medical or developmental needs. Most are in nurturing foster families and receive exceptional in-country care while they wait to join their families. With a unique expertise cultivated over more than 65 years in Korea, our Korea team is well equipped to guide your family through the adoption process. We will work closely with you to anticipate needs, overcome obstacles and support you throughout your journey to welcome a child into your family.

Intake for the Korea program is currently closed and Holt’s Korea adoption program is not accepting standard process applications. Contact us at adopt@holtinternational.org to learn about Holt’s other country programs and the children who need families!

Children in Korea Who Need Families

• Children are on average 2-3 years old at the time they join their adoptive families.
• More boys than girls from Korea need families through international adoption, and families cannot specify a gender preference.
• Families must be open to a child with needs, including prenatal alcohol/tobacco exposure and developmental delays. Contact us at adopt@holtinternational.org for more information on common child needs.
• All children stay in nurturing foster families while they wait, and a significant amount of information is typically available about the child, including any known/reported history from the child’s birth family.
• Older children and those with more involved needs are featured on our waiting child photolisting.
• Children with few or no identified needs are adopted domestically in Korea. As a result, Holt needs families able to parent a child with more involved needs.

by Arundathie Abeysinghe  courtesy PIME Asia News 

An organised crime cartel allegedly brought 13 children ‘regularly’ from Sri Lanka to Malaysia and from there, using false documents, they were trafficked to the rest of the world, including Europe. The chairman of the National Child Protection Authority, Udayakumara Amarasinghe: ‘Parents are given a certain amount of money to take them abroad even though this is a criminal offence’.

Colombo (AsiaNews) – Last week the Sri Lankan immigration and emigration control body filed a formal complaint with the human trafficking, smuggling and maritime crime investigation division of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) regarding an alleged ‘cartel’ of human trafficking – in particular children under 18 years of age, mostly Tamil citizens from the northern and eastern areas – who were allegedly brought to Malaysia.

Having arrived in the South-East Asian country “in a regular fashion” and often accompanied by their parents who receive money in exchange, traffickers would provide them with false passports with which these children would then be sold in other countries including France and the United Kingdom using counterfeit travel documents.

The 15th international EurAdopt conference on adoption will be held on April 17th and 18th 2024 in Cambridge, UK.

The conference is organised by the European association of accredited intercountry adoption organisations, EurAdopt, in cooperation with Coram IAC, the leading intercountry adoption agency in the UK. Our former CEO, Satwinder Sandhu, will moderate the event.

The theme will be The Generational Impact of Adoption and will explore adoption from the perspectives of the adoptees, adoptive parents, grandparents and birth siblings within adoptive families. Researchers and practitioners from Europe, North America and Asia will present new research and experiences from the perspective of the adoptee, adoptive parents, grandparents and family, as well as considering the current challenges faced by service users and by agencies.  This conference will be of interest to accredited bodies, adoption central authorities, adoption practitioners (both local and intercountry),  lawyers, academics and those whose lives are touched by adoption.

Speakers confirmed so far are:

Beth Neil, Professor of Social Work, University of East Anglia, UK

T. R. Fehrenbach’s classic history of the Korean War, This Kind of War (1962), famously calls the conflict “not a test of power—because neither antagonist used full powers—but a test of wills.”1 Originally subtitled A Study in Unpreparedness, it describes a US that learned the hard way what it took to fight a limited proxy war abroad. The first chapter, “Seoul, Saturday Night,” recounts the eve of the Korean War in anticipatory detail, with the pathos of retrospective knowledge. Surveying the American colony and its embassy bars, the narrator observes:

Over tax-free liquor, the colony laughed over Foster’s [John Foster Dulles] visit, and over the official who had been caught keeping North Korea’s Number One female spy. This man had even bought the woman a short-wave radio, and it was said the ROK’s would shoot her.

In spite of American influence, the ROK’s were still extremely brutal to leftist elements in their midst. Of course, they could not shoot the American official.

There had been a child, towheaded yet, the American wives in Seoul told each other. Some American couple would, of course, adopt it.2

The final sentence of this anecdote appears to end this story of sex, violence, and treason rather matter-of-factly. Though Fehrenbach often sums up other passages with quotable philosophical adages, this sentence is not one. As a line of free indirect discourse, it offers complexity rather than a voice of clear moral insight. Does it belong to the American wives, retaining the previous sentence’s whisper of scandal? Or has the omniscient historian picked up the thread here, returning us to a world of objective fact? And what about the “would” of “would adopt it”? If part of the local gossip, the adoption could range from speculative to probable; if spoken from the narrator’s present, it would be a fait accompli. Regardless, adoption is figured here as a thing taken for granted. As a geopolitical solution, its potential ramifications are dismissed in their very expression.

The vagueness of agency and moral reasoning in this sentence reflects the historical formalization of transnational adoption. Between the dual narrative temporalities of this sentence as character speech and historian’s narration, adoption of these “towheaded,” mixed-race children would transition from an informal possibility to an established practice of moving children across borders, from a collection of ad hoc processes to a matter overseen by social welfare professionals and immigration services. In the years to come, transnational adoption would prove an established option for modern family-making in the West and part of America’s humanitarian repertoire in subsequent conflicts. Korea, too, would continue to be one of the top “sending countries” of children to the US, with an estimated ten percent of all Korean Americans having been adopted from abroad.3

CFAB’s mission is to use our expertise and experience to ensure vulnerable children and families who are separated across international borders are given care and protection, no matter where they come from. As the only UK charity with a qualified team of international child protection professionals, we are uniquely placed to help children reunite safely with family.
 

1950s

Known as ISS GB, we help to resettle hundreds of refugees fleeing to the UK and its colonies following the Hungarian Uprising and Chinese ‘Great Leap Forward’, and continue to provide support to British children searching for their foreign servicemen parents after the Second World War.