Interest groups of Dutch adoptees are satisfied with the report of the Joustra Committee presented today. That committee concluded that international adoptions as currently organized can no longer take place.

"There have been many abuses in the past, but the adoption system is still susceptible to fraud and abuses continue to this day", said committee chairman Tjibbe Joustra. The government has temporarily halted all adoptions .

Many adoptees have been looking for their biological family for years and encounter all kinds of abuses and shady adoption practices. It is therefore often impossible to find out what the real reason for their adoption was and whether it was legal. For Chamila Seppenwoolde of United Adoptees International, the conclusions are not new: "We have been denouncing abuses for years." She thinks the temporary stop on adoptions should be a permanent one. "Because apologizing means not only saying sorry, but also not going to do it again."

Judy Aubrain of Plan Kiskeya from Haiti supports the conclusions of the Joustra committee and appreciates the government's apologies. "That is a great recognition for many adoptees and families in Haiti," said Aubrain.

It is not the first time that a critical report on adoptions has appeared. In 2016, the Council for the Application of Criminal Law and Youth Protection also came to the conclusion that it would be better to stop international adoptions. Much attention has also been paid in the media to shady adoption practices. Already in 2007 made network a story about stolen children from India. Zembla made several broadcasts about adoption fraud and Nieuwsuur paid attention to shady adoptions a number of times . Since the late 1960s, approximately 40,000 children have come to the Netherlands. In 2019 there were 145, mainly from Hungary and China.

Children who have been trafficked, adoptees introduced to the wrong biological family, distance mothers who have been robbed of their babies: the examples of wrongdoing resulting from international adoption are poignant and legion.

The harsh report that the Joustra Committee presented on Monday leaves little to the idealistic ideas that so often surrounded adoption in the past. According to the research, a 'demand-driven adoption market' has emerged 'in which large amounts of money are involved'. The committee led by former top civil servant Tjibbe Joustra has established that the system 'works like a' money laundering operation 'for children'.

It hardly comes as a surprise after reading all this disaster that the committee advises to limit international adoption completely. It is remarkable that the cabinet announced on Monday, through Minister Sander Dekker (Justice), that it would follow the advice immediately. No new adoption procedures are being started for prospective parents who want to get a child from abroad.

That is a break with the past. When in 2016 a report by the Council for the Application of Criminal Law and Youth Protection advised the government to ban foreign adoption , the criticism was still dissipated. In the past, something may have gone wrong, but for some situations adoption is the only solution, was the reasoning in The Hague at the time.

Loud voice

Joure (6 Feb) - “My adoption is the best thing that happened to me in my life”, says Jaap Jonkers, candidate member of parliament for the CDA from Joure. On Monday (February 8), the Joustra Committee recommended that the adoption of children from abroad be prohibited for the time being because of 'serious abuses' from the past.

Jaap Jonkers (36) explains why he has difficulty with the committee's conclusion: “In 1985 I was abandoned at a children's home in Bolivia. Without my adoption to the Netherlands I would undoubtedly have grown up under the name Pablo in poverty and without parents. By a lot of luck I ended up with loving parents in Hardenberg and I was baptized as Jaap. Without adoption I might not have lived now. "

He realizes that there have been wrongdoing: “I will be the last to deny that. The injustice done to children through illegal practices such as child trafficking is a violation of human rights. That has to stop. The Joustra Committee's investigation will be thorough. I don't want to question that. But I think the proposed measure is very drastic. You say to children like me: You are no longer welcome in our prosperous society. I have great difficulty with that. In addition, you deprive people who have bad luck and who cannot get pregnant biologically in order to become parents. ”

The number 27 of the CDA looks like any Bolivian: “I have always felt welcome and have never felt less fully Dutch because I was born in South America and clearly look like Pablo instead of Jaap. This has never been an issue. In fact, what happened to me in my early childhood is my main motivation to dedicate myself to society and especially to those who did not get those opportunities or for whom fate was less favorable. ”

Jaap Jonkers wants to emphasize with his story that there are also many positive stories. They are now in danger of being underexposed. “My adoption has changed my life so positively that I think this story should also be heard. The reality is that children like Pablo are still being born whom I wish to grow up as Jaap. I represent that voice, since their voice can only be heard once they have become a Jaap. ”

On December 15 last, your House asked me to respond to the newspaper article "Baby factories big business" from the Telegraaf of December 12 last. You ask me to answer the question of whether it can be ruled out that children from the baby factories, as mentioned in the newspaper article, ended up in the Netherlands. Because the investigation report of the Joustra Committee will not specifically address the situation in Nigeria, I am informing you about this separately in this letter.

International adoption procedures between the Netherlands and Nigeria have always taken place between the Dutch permit holder Stichting Kind en Toekomst and a mediation agency accredited by the Nigerian government. The children who have been adopted come exclusively from a home registered by the Nigerian government. In addition, in the context of an intercountry adoption procedure, the parents or, if the parents are deceased, a family member, must renounce the child. When it comes to foundlings, the Nigerian police investigate the background of the child and look for possible relatives. In those cases, advertisements are also placed in newspapers asking whether family members of the child concerned can register. Only after this examination can the child be declared adoptable through the Nigerian authorities. The ratification of the adoption procedure on the Nigerian side always takes place in court where the adoptive parents must be present. The children admitted for adoption in the Netherlands are almost all children older than 12 months. In most cases there is a socially burdened background and / or medical problems.

Moreover, from 2013 on the Dutch side, all adoption proposals from Nigeria (and other countries that are not party to the Hague Adoption Convention) have been submitted by the Central Authority.

International Children's Affairs reviewed. The principles of the Hague Adoption Convention and Dutch legislation and regulations were taken as the starting point in the assessment of these adoption proposals.

Within the available options, every effort has been made to ensure that procedures proceed in a careful manner. As the Joustra Committee indicates in its report, it cannot be completely ruled out that abuses have occurred during intercountry adoption. As I have previously informed the House (Parliamentary Papers II 31 265, no. 62), the current working method, in which the principle of legitimate expectations applies and stricter supervision of the procedures, cannot exclude the occurrence of irregularities.

To the President of the House of Representatives

of the States General

Box 20018

2500 EA THE HAGUE

Date

Terre des Hommes Nederland supports the conclusions of the Joustra Commission report on intercountry adoption and argues that the temporary stop should lead to abolition of the practice. Terre des Hommes spoke with the Commission about adoptions from Bangladesh in the 1970s and also shared its views on intercountry adoptions.

In the 1970s, Terre des Hommes Netherlands provided emergency medical assistance, schooling and assistance with the construction of emergency shelters in Bangladesh, ravaged by civil war and natural disasters. Our then local director in Bangladesh, in addition to his employment at Terre des Hommes, was also paid by the Dutch adoption organization BIA (Bureau Interlandelijke Adoptie). In that role he coordinated adoptions. Terre des Hommes NL was aware of this but had no role in the adoption procedures. In 1977 he was accused of convincing parents to give up their child for adoption under false pretenses. The allegations implied that he had abused the confidence that these parents had in the BIA and in Terre des Hommes.

In response to renewed questions about this issue by the adoptees of this period and the investigation of the Joustra Commission, Terre des Hommes has researched and made available as much historical information as possible about our work in Bangladesh in the 1970s. We shared the report on this in September 2020 with the interest groups of the adoptees and the Joustra Commission.

Forty years later, it is difficult to determine exactly how each adoption came about. We have however found no evidence that our country director at the time misused his position as representative of Terre des Hommes. The various investigations at the time also did not confirm this. However, what we have seen is that due to the interdependence of all aid organizations and the chaotic humanitarian emergency in Bangladesh, the various international and local aid organizations worked together to assist each other at times. In a sense, Terre des Hommes was intertwined with these adoptions. For example, employees of Terre des Hommes would on occasion escort children to the Netherlands.

As a children's rights organization, we feel very involved with the adoptees who are now, more than 40 years later, struggling with uncertainty about their origin and the circumstances of their adoption. We are also aware of the families in Bangladesh who have similar questions about the fate of their adopted child, brother or sister. That is why we offered support to the interest groups of the adoptees last year. Over the next two years, we will provide financial and - if desired - practical support to their initiatives to restore contact between adoptees and their relatives with a targeted search program. We hope to be able to report more about this together with these organizations in the short term.

The government immediately suspends international adoptions. There is structural child theft, child trafficking and unethical behavior in adoptions, concluded the Joustra Committee.

Our director-manager Ina HR Hut calls on the government to compensate adoptees and biological parents if possible.

With the temporary suspension, the cabinet is following the advice of the Joustra committee, which has come up with hard-hitting conclusions. On behalf of Minister Sander Dekker, the committee investigated the role of the government in adoptions from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka between 1967 and 1998. However, the committee notes that before 1967 and after 1998 and also in other countries was and is from adoption abuses. The committee concludes that the system of intercountry adoption is still susceptible to fraud and that abuses continue to this day. The committee has serious doubts whether it is possible to design a public law system in which the identified abuses no longer occur. See here the report.

Outgoing Minister of Legal Protection Sander Dekker admits that the government has looked away for too long: 'The Dutch government has failed by looking away from abuses in intercountry adoption for years and not intervening in this.'

Our managing director Ina Hut is pleased with the conclusions. she too was heard by the committee. In 2003 she made the switch from board member of Nyenrode University to Wereldkinderen, an adoption and project aid organization. At the time, she still thought adoption was a noble thing, but soon discovered that the demand side stimulated the supply. This was also a reason for her to stop her own adoption procedure after she was director of Wereldkinderen for a year. She thought she could improve the system from within, but that was fighting a losing battle. For example, she wanted to do further research into adoptions from China, because she was getting more and more suspicions and evidence of child trafficking. But in this she was opposed by the Ministry of Security and Justice (Central Authority Office). If she were to conduct research in China, The permit of Wereldkinderen would be revoked, it was threatened. She could no longer support intercountry adoption and publicly resigned as a whistleblower in 2009. See here thedocumentary by EO Network. Parliamentary questions and a General Consultation about her departure followed. See here the report that Ina Hut wrote for the Lower House for the General Consultation dated 6 October 2009. However, this did not lead to a stop. However, the number of applications for adoption decreased considerably, because the image changed.

New corporate due diligence law could put an end to profit from forced labour and child labour

Brussels, 8 February 2021

We are on the brink of a major opportunity to advance and protect human rights for people all over the world. In the next few months, the European Union will further debate a proposed business and human rights law that would require companies operating in the EU to prevent and address human rights abuses and environmental damage in their global supply chains. This commitment to responsible business could help tackle forced labour and child labour in supply chains around the world.

On Monday 8 February, the European Commission closed a public consultation on the proposed law. We took part in this consultation, together with partner organisations in more than 20 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nepal, South Africa and Turkmenistan. We also actively encouraged our supporters and allies to do the same, and we want to thank everyone who took part: this consultation proved to the European Commission that people all over the world look to the EU to show leadership, courage and compassion for oppressed people everywhere.

Real action needed to combine business and human rights

The Joustra Committee has advised the outgoing cabinet to suspend the adoption of children from abroad for the time being. The report of former director Tjibbe Joustra will be presented on Monday morning. The report refers to "serious abuses" in the Dutch adoption culture.

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Commissie presenteert rapport over misstanden adoptiecultuur

De commissie-Joustra heeft het demissionair kabinet geadviseerd de adoptie van kinderen uit het buitenland voorlopig stil te leggen. Maandagochtend wordt het rapport van oud-bestuurder Tjibbe Joustra gepresenteerd. In het rapport wordt gesproken over "ernstige misstanden" bij de Nederlandse adoptiecultuur.

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Statement Adoption Association Gereformeerde Gezindte (AVGG) in response to the report of the Joustra Committee. [1]

On February 8, 2021, the Commission Investigation into Intercountry Adoption handed over the report with the results of its investigation to the Minister for Legal Protection. The committee has investigated the actual course of affairs regarding intercountry adoptions and the role and responsibility of the Dutch government in this regard. Commissioned by the committee, Statistics Netherlands has conducted research into the living situation, well-being and search behavior of intercountry adoptees. This covers the period 1967-1998, before the introduction of the Hague Adoption Convention. During the execution of the original investigation assignment, the Committee, in consultation with the Minister, expanded the investigation into known abuses outside this period and outside these five investigated countries of origin.

The adoption community is deeply shocked by those adoptions where abuses occurred in the 1970s-1990s. Recognition is appropriate here for the suffering inflicted on those involved, the adoptees and their biological family. Our association also thinks of the adoptive parents, who entered into a procedure in good faith, which later turned out to be based on lies. They see the pain their children struggle with. We realize that questions can arise about God's providence, doubts about God's way of which adoptees and their parents were previously firmly convinced. Could not then arise the complaint from the book of Job: Shall God pervert justice, and the Almighty pervert justice? (Job 8:3)

The AVGG was founded in 1979, in the middle of the period under investigation. (Former) members of our association have also had to deal with abuses. Although the AVGG has not mediated in adoptions and has not committed any culpable acts, the association has not always reacted as alertly and empathetically. If anyone was hurt in doing so, even if it was done in ignorance, we hereby apologize.

We support the following recommendations made by the committee and adopted by the minister: