I’ve always known that I’m adopted, it’s a conversation that my parents and I have had since I was two and we all flew back on a plane from China. In many ways, I think that the candor on the distinctions between myself and the rest of my family, and indeed, the world around me, encouraged me to always have a strong voice. I felt like I needed to say things louder, in order to be equally recognised.

Things that should have been easy for me became more challenging as I came to terms with issues surrounding race and identity.

The Girl With Many Faces | Jinling Wu

Allie was adopted from China when she was two years old.

As I was growing into this world, there were so many foundations that I was missing, and I had to create those roots myself

I’ve always known that I’m adopted, it’s a conversation that my parents and I have had since I was two and we all flew back on a plane from China. In many ways, I think that the candor on the distinctions between myself and the rest of my family, and indeed, the world around me, encouraged me to always have a strong voice. I felt like I needed to say things louder, in order to be equally recognised.

Things that should have been easy for me became more challenging as I came to terms with issues surrounding race and identity.

The Girl With Many Faces | Jinling Wu

Allie was adopted from China when she was two years old.

As I was growing into this world, there were so many foundations that I was missing, and I had to create those roots myself

After a devastating report on abuses, the Netherlands immediately suspended international adoption. Nova-Lilly (33) also had to deal with this. She was adopted from Sri Lanka, but had a terrible childhood.

'All my childhood I was punished. Sometimes I had just 'looked wrong', sometimes my room was not properly tidy. Then my mother would empty my desk drawers on the floor. "Start over," she shouted. I was seven. If I was "not nice" she would take me to her sister. After a week, sometimes longer, I was allowed to return. My brother and sister were just at home. According to her, they were 'nice'. '

'I was adopted. My adoptive parents, Peter and Marja, were invited by the adoption agency to pick up 'their' child in Sri Lanka. They preferred a girl. Once arrived there were only boys. Marja and Peter suddenly only wanted a girl on the spot. I was six days old and literally moved somewhere when I lay in their arms. In the Netherlands I had a brother of one, their biological child. When I was four, another girl came from Sri Lanka. '

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Emily (36) about the cot death of her son: 'He just should have been here'

Two parents in a Småland municipality received an adopted child from abroad.

One and a half years later, they "repented" and returned the child, who was of preschool age, to the country of origin. It reports the news agency Siren.

Now a social secretary wants the health and care inspectorate, Ivo, to answer how the municipality should act.

The Social Welfare Board must have been in contact with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA), which must have issued directives on the care of the child.

As the child is already abroad, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must have told the municipality that the "implementation of the decision" should go through them, through a so-called "request for enforcement".

The notion of Finnishness as whiteness challenges internationally adopted people to negotiate their identity, The Doctoral Research reveals. The Doctoral Research to be examined at the University of Jyväskylä examines the family of birth, the adoption family and the normative conception of Finnishness in the identity negotiations of internationally adopted people.

In her dissertation, Maarit Koskinen, M.Sc., examined the identity work of internationally adopted people. The research focused especially on the meanings of the family of birth, the adopted family and the normative conception of Finnishness in the negotiations on the identity of the adoptees.

Since 1985, almost 5,000 children have been adopted internationally in Finland. International adoptions are often closed adoptions, where the child has no contact with his or her family of birth as he or she grows up. Internationally adopted Finns also often differ from the native Finnish population in their physical characteristics, which exposes them to various experiences of racization, among other things. According to Koskinen's dissertation research, the identity negotiations of internationally adopted people often show both the unknown origin of birth and a different appearance from the native Finns.

Finding a family of birth builds an identity

Research interviews revealed that adulthood in particular, adopted parents ’own parenting, and encountering the family of birth were significant transitions in adopted lives. In this case, the negotiation of one's own identity was also activated.

Two parents in Jönköping County adopted a child of preschool age from another country, but after a year and a half with the child, the parents regretted it and wanted to return the adopted child.

The child is now back in his home country, but the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has issued a directive that the child must be taken care of in accordance with the Care of Young People Act.

A social secretary has now written to the Swedish Health and Care Inspectorate for the authority to sort out the question of what should be done and by whom.

.

- So awful.

- How can anyone make themselves do that to a small child?

Fy for the devil

This is how Anette S. writes in one of the comments written on SVT's Jönköbing's Facebook profile about a local couple who, after a year and a half with an adopted child, have handed it back to the country the child originally came from. And Anette S is not the only one who is shaken by the case, which has led the municipality to ask the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help:

- Damn it.

(New York) – Panama’s National Assembly passed a bill on March 3, 2021, that includes a discriminatory prohibition on adoption by same-sex couples, Human Rights Watch said today.

Bill No.120, which aims to protect children and adolescents from unnecessary separation from their biological family, allows for adoption by both single persons and married couples. However, not only are same-sex marriages not yet legal in Panama, but the bill defines eligible married couples as those composed of partners of “different sex.”

President Laurentino Cortizo should veto articles 22 and 26 of the bill, which violate international human rights standards on non-discrimination, respect for private and family life, and the rights of the child, and perpetuate prejudices about lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people.

“Excluding same-sex couples as adoptive parents is not only stigmatizing but in Panama compounds the violation of not having their relationships acknowledged or protected in the first place,” said Cristian González Cabrera, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Categorically barring children from being adopted into loving and supportive families is also inconsistent with the principle of the best interest of the child.”

After passing the National Assembly, the bill is now ready for signature by President Cortizo, who has the legal authority to veto all or part of it.

I have just sent an open letter to the President of the European Commission, Madam Ursula Von Der Leyen, asking for an investigation to be opened in France and Romania on illegal adoptions since the 1980s. I invite all adoptees from of a so-called illegal adoption to write to the President of the European Commission.

Open letter to Madam President of the European Commission

Madam President Ursula Von Der Leyen,

My name is Maria Cotoara, I am of Romanian origin born under the dictatorship of Ceausescu and adopted by a French family in the 80s. I refuse to use my French first and last name because my identity was stolen without my consent. My birth certificate is false, since my first name and official name do not appear anywhere, as well as the identity of my biological family which is part of my genetic heritage. Like many adoptees, I felt like "a pawn" in my own story.

Because I grew up in a nest of lies, of "unspoken" in my daily life. These lies are everywhere, in our files, in our identities, in our stories, in our abandonments since I was told, and my adoptive parents, that my birth mother had passed away. It took me over 10 years to look for her and find her by chance. She was not dead. The Romanian authorities told her I was dead. My mother, who was in a situation of precariousness placed me in a nursery but never wanted to abandon me. She did the necessary to come and see me every day, management prevented her from doing so and forced her to sign an act of relinquishment before I was transferred to another city (400 km from my hometown) and another institution without her consent.

In the past, children were auctioned off, which today is considered completely reprehensible. Today, children are instead sent around the globe as commodities.

The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden has provided figures on the mental illness of foreign adoptees, which show that almost every 20th foreign adoptee has attempted or committed suicide. Among those who committed suicide were many women. Sweden is the country that has received the most children per capita, but there is no talk of the mental illness that flourishes among them, even though in other cases Sweden is good at seeing the child perspective.

The media usually retrieve their data from research reports, but rarely interview the real experts. the adoptees abroad themselves! You almost get the feeling that we are an imbecile sheep cook who can not bring our own case. The children who are adopted are spotted as an order item in someone's almanac and then transported around the world! In Sweden, there is something called Adoptionslån and anyone who is a member of Adoptionscentrum can take out such a loan to be able to adopt children!

In my eyes, you take out a loan to be able to buy a house or a car, but certainly not children, and what happens if the prospective adoptive parents fall into the debt trap?

The children are completely lawless in this context as the states do not respect the children's rights, nation and family relations. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN's so-called human rights that apply to other children do not apply to adoptees abroad. These are cold facts and are a sign that the decision-makers lack knowledge in the psychological process that is forced on these children.