In a country of over a billion people, the average waiting time to adopt a child via legal route is three years. However, most governments sideline delays in the adoption process as a non-issue. I In India, adoption involves multiple stakeholders - Center, States, CARA and PaPs (Prospective Adoptive Parents) to come together. This has made the process complex. Considering that it impacts children languishing in the CCIs on one hand and PaPs on the other, who wait endlessly to adopt children through legal routes, a group of 300+ PaPs (collaborating under the aegis of Adoption Action Group) have signed and sent a letter to the Ministry of WCD to fix these issues

Adoption Action Group (AAG), a PaP registered with CARA, works to bring together and unite the adoptive community in India and provide a platform for them to voice their concerns by highlighting the loopholes in the adoption system. While there are many advocacy groups and counselling forums on parenting that talk about child rights and adoption as a subject, this is the first group dedicated to the cause of adoptive parents and the struggle they go through on adopting in India.

AAG does not represent any non-profit or an organisation. It is a collective of PaPs and adoptive parents who are together to make adoption a smoother process. The collective has people from all walks of life. With 26,000 PaPs (as per an RTI response) waiting to adopt, the number of children adopted in the 0-5 age group last year is less than 3,200. This year in the last eight months less than 1,800 children have been placed with PaPs in the 0-2 category. In addition to this, the country has an extremely limited number of government bodies to bring more children into the adoption pool — 486-Specialised Adoption Agencies (SAAs), 642- District Child Protection Units (DCPUs), 5810- Child Care Institutions (CCIs). This has a direct impact on the families and parents who choose to create a family via adoption. In addition to this lack of response from CARA and information gaps make it difficult for the PaPs to sustain their journey. Ultimately, the system is not only discouraging those who are keen to adopt but adding to the dangers of illegal adoptions.

Abandoned, orphaned or surrendered kids enter the adoption pool through the legal process and paperwork initiated by CWCs. Only the kids declared legally fit to adopt come to CARA's adoption pool. Once a child is recused or surrendered it is the responsibility of the CWC to ensure the well being of the child. In cases where the child is adoptable the CCIs and the CWCs should work in co-ordination to initiate and complete the process in due time. In many cases this is never done. Many of these children grow up in institutions getting older and hence losing their chance of early adoption.

Adopting a newborn abandoned child

The newborn girl, who was rescued over a month ago after being found abandoned near Harur bus stand, was handed over to Bethal Agricultural Fellowship Adoption Center, Salem, by Collector S. Dhivyadarshini on Wednesday. The infant, named Anupriya by the Collector, was at the NICU ward of the Dharmapuri government medical college hospital for over 40 days.

Those seeking claim to the child must contact the administration within 60 days from November 24.

The adoption row showed scarce signs of abating on Thursday.

The infant's mother, Anupama S. Chandran, has vowed to continue her struggle to unseat those at the helm of the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare (KSCCW) and Child Welfare Committee (CWC).

Ms. Anupama sought the prosecution of KSCCW general secretary J.S. Shiju Khan on the charge of violating the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act. She also wanted the CWC disbanded.

The United Democratic Front (UDF) Opposition and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have thrown their weight behind Ms. Anupama. Notably, Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) legislator K.K. Rema and social activist P.E. Usha were with Ms. Anupama through every step of her protest.

The State Government had ordered the Women and Child Development Department director to inquire into the incident and fix accountability on those responsible for the wrongful adoption.

Wanted and (not) found: Annick tells

We talk quickly about seeking, finding and contacting first parents, but not everyone has to search, can find or has contact. In this series, various adoptees tell how they experience this.

Annick | 36 years | °India | founder Adoptie Schakel | children's coach

“Meanwhile, the images have faded, but they are still there”

I was almost five years old when my adoptive parents came to pick me up in Zaventem. That was in December 1989. A year and a half before that, my uncle took me to the orphanage in Madras. He came to visit me regularly, but after six months I was transferred to Calcutta. I grew up in Tongeren with an older brother.

The Hague Conference is well known for its work on the International Adoption Convention in 1993. This intergovernmental institution currently brings together 89 member states, including France. Its lawyers mainly deal with issues of private international law. They draw up international conventions which the member states decide to ratify, or not.

In 2015, the Hague Conference created a Group of Experts to establish international parentage laws for children born from surrogacy, a practice which is banned in many countries.

This Group of Experts entitled “Parentage/Surrogacy” includes officials from the Ministries of Justice, lawyers, academics, as well as some associations who contribute as “observers”, such as the UNICEF. The group only met 9 times in 7 years and extremely succinct reports are available on their website.

The ICASM (International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood) has been denouncing these meetings for years. According to the coalition “working to harmonize national laws on filiation for children born from surrogacy, boils down to legitimizing surrogacy and encouraging it on a world scale”. Since 2020, the ICASM has been denouncing the fact that “The Hague Conference (HCCH) is working hard to regulate surrogacy. This is a real blank cheque to the globalized surrogacy trade, mostly in the poorest countries of the world.” Since 2020, the ICASM has been countering with a “Draft International Convention for the Abolition of Surrogacy”.

The same outcry can be heard from the “CoRP”, (COllective for the Respect of the Person). “You cannot claim to protect a child by endorsing a practice whereby he is bought and sold, treated as an object and cut off from his origins,” asserts its president, Ana-Luana Stoicea-Deram. As co-author of the book The Markets of Motherhood (2021), Odile Jacob aims at the most powerful lobby of American reproductive clinics in The Hague.

We quickly talk about searching, finding and contacting first parents, but not everyone has to search, can find or have contact. In this series, various adoptees tell how they experience this.

Annick | 36 years | °India | founder Adoptie Schakel | child coach | buddy at a-Buddy

“Meanwhile, the images have faded, but they are still there”

I was almost five years old when my adoptive parents picked me up in Zaventem. That was in December 1989. A year and a half before that, my uncle took me to the orphanage in Madras. He came to visit me regularly, but after six months I was transferred to Calcutta. I grew up in Tongeren with an older brother.

In the beginning I told my parents and grandmother about India. About a blue house, a train, rooms with other kids… They didn't know if my stories were fantasy or reality, but because it was so detailed, they thought it must be some of it. So they wrote everything down in a booklet. I myself did not know for a long time: did I have to remember it, was I dreaming or fantasizing?

The Delhi High Court has issued various steps for enabling adoptive and biological

parents to obtain the required certification and no- objection from District Magistrates,

foreign authorities and Central Adoption Resource Authority(CARA) in relation with inter

country adoptions.

Justice Pratibha M Singh issued the following steps to be considered by the concerned

For the first time, the Dutch government has been ordered to pay compensation to an illegally adopted person. The court in The Hague ruled on Wednesday that the government 'could and should have done' more for Patrick Noordoven, who came over from Brazil in 1980 as a baby.

The damages awarded are a direct result of the damning report published by the Joustra Commission in February on child adoptions from abroad . Noordoven filed the lawsuit last year because he was unable to know his origin due to the negligence of the Dutch government. Initially, the government invoked limitation, but after the report dropped that defense. That decision paved the way for lawsuits like this one.

Noordoven started in 2001 with a search for his biological parents . He soon discovered that there had never been an official adoption procedure in his case. Through the Public Administration Act (WOB request) he found out that the government had investigated illegal adoption in Brazil in the years after his arrival in the Netherlands. Although the government therefore knew that the adoptions of Noordoven and 41 other children were wrong, they did not see to it that the children could later trace their origin.

Because it is established in Noordoven's case that the Dutch government was aware of the abuses, the court awarded him compensation on Wednesday. This could not be established in other intercountry adoption cases. For example, a Bangladeshi woman was told today by the same court that she is not entitled to anything. The amount of Noordoven's compensation will be determined later.

Right to identity

In its order, the judge had noted that the adoption proceedings were initiated in the case on the premise that the “child was abandoned and his biological parents could not be found.”

The baby boy, who was given in pre-adoption foster care to a couple from Andhra Pradesh, was reunited with his biological mother on Wednesday following a court order.

On a day marked by high drama, the Family Court, Thiruvananthapuram, ordered the release of the baby to his biological mother after “dropping and summarily dismissing” the adoption proceedings.

Ground Zero | A missing baby and a flustered state

K. Biju Menon, the Family Court judge, had advanced the proceedings in the case and passed the order by evening considering the plea of the State. The case was originally scheduled to be considered on November 30.

On 24 November 2021, the District Court of The Hague substantially awarded the claim of the illegally adopted Patrick Noordoven against the State of the Netherlands. The judgment of the court can be found here.

Patrick Noordoven was illegally adopted from Brazil in 1980. His parentage was thereby misrepresented, by giving him up as the biological child of the Dutch couple who adopted him illegally. Shortly after his illegal adoption, the police conducted an investigation and concluded that Patrick Noordoven and 41 other children had been adopted illegally from Brazil to the Netherlands. Nevertheless, after the investigation, the State did not take measures to enable Patrick Noordoven to know his parentage and the circumstances of his illegal adoption. The Court concluded that by doing so, the State acted in violation of Patrick Noordoven's right to identity and knowledge of his parentage.

As a result, Patrick Noordoven had to devote 20 years of his life to finding his biological parents. In addition, he has conducted years of research to clarify how his illegal adoption took place and what role the Dutch state had played in it. The court therefore ruled that the State is liable for the damage that Patrick Noordoven has suffered as a result.

The court rejected the claim that the State is (also) liable for the fact that the illegal adoption of Patrick Noordoven was effected with the help of a Dutch diplomat or was facilitated by the Dutch Diplomatic representations in Brazil.

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