Public evening lecture by PD Dr. iur. Monika Pfaffinger
Tuesday 19 March 2024, 7:15 p.m. to 8:15 p.m., followed by an aperitif
Faculty of Law of the University of Basel, PRO IURE Auditorium, Peter Merian-Weg 8, CH-4002 Basel

Consequences for the Institute of International Adoption in the Light of the Irregularities Found – Findings and Recommendations of the Expert Group on International Adoption

In Switzerland, too, serious irregularities occurred in the context of international adoptions. This led to the establishment of the expert group on international adoption. The Federal Council and the Federal Office of Justice commissioned it to develop solutions, including legal reforms. One of the guiding principles was that unlawful practices must never be repeated. In her presentation, the chair of the expert group will provide an insight into the analyses and recommendations according to the interim report of March 28, 2023, published on December 8, 2023. The expert group considers the continuation of previous practices to be legally and morally impossible and is convinced that a fundamental change is required. What such a change could look like will be presented and discussed at the evening event.

A woman from Dublin, born into a mother and baby home in Northern Ireland, has said she feels "abandoned again" because she is excluded from a new compensation scheme.

Sinead Buckley was born in 1972 to an unmarried woman from the Republic of Ireland.

At that time her mother, Eileen, was living in Marianvale in Newry.

A midwife in Dublin, Eileen came north because of the fear and stigma associated with being a single mother.

Marianvale was one of a network of institutions across the island of Ireland which housed unmarried women and their babies at a time when pregnancy outside marriage was viewed as scandalous.

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) Local governments will be required to be involved in the care and evaluation processes when a child goes through the adoption process in their locality, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Friday, in response to the death of a 1-year-old boy allegedly due to abuse by his foster caregiver.

Local governments need to play a greater role in the foster care system, the ministry said during a meeting with the Taipei and New Taipei city governments and the Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) -- which were all involved in the recent case.

Current rules around the adoption process differ among local governments and the law lacks a clear explanation of who is responsible for each element, explained Chang Mei-mei (張美美), deputy director of the ministry's Social and Family Affairs Administration.

Therefore, before any amendments are made to the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act, local governments need to be consulted, Chang said.

Chang said the ministry will also ensure that all children under the age of 3 going through the adoption process are assigned a holistic physician -- doctors who provide catered individual medical care and health management -- regardless of parental consent.

The Supreme Court (on March 15), while hearing a PIL to simplify adoption procedures, observed that the States are prima facie in breach of the previous directions to expedite the adoption process. In view of this, the Court gave the States one last opportunity to comply with the directions, failing which the Court may resort to coercive proceedings. The bench, led by Chief Justice of...

After growing up and taking over the family business, Naval Tata married Sooni Commissariat with whom he had two sons - Ratan Tata and Jimmy Tata. The couple got separated in the 1940s.

 The Tata Group is one of the most successful businesses in India but not many people are aware of the Tata family tee. Today, we will tell you about Ratan Tata's father Naval Tata who was not born but was adopted into the multi-billion dollar net worth business family.

Naval Tata was born in 1904 in a middle-class family. His father was a Spinning Master in the Advanced Mills at Ahmedabad. He died in 1908. His family then relocated to Navsari. Naval Tata's mother was the sole earner of the family through her embroidery work. Naval Tata was young when he was boarded at the JN Petit Parsi Orphanage. Here, Navajbai, wife of Ratanji Tata, adopted him and turned his fortunes. Naval Tata was 13 years old at the time. He then graduated from Bombay University in Economics and then went to London for a course in Accounting. 

fter growing up and taking over the family business, Naval Tata married Sooni Commissariat with whom he had two sons - Ratan Tata and Jimmy Tata. The couple got separated in the 1940s. Naval Tata then married Simone Dunoyer, a businesswoman from Switzerland, in 1955. Noel Tata is their son. 

Naval Tata’s wife Simone Tata is the stepmother of former Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata. Famous make-up brand Lakme and popular store Westside are also the brainchild of Simone Tata.

Indore: A visually impaired girl in Indore was adopted by an American couple under Juvenile Justice Act. The adoption process was facilitated by Sanjeevani Seva Sangam institution, the woman and child development officials said. The girl, completely blind, received her passport and left for the US with her new family on Thursday, WCD district programme officer Ramniwas Budholiya said.

“A visually-impaired girl with special needs, who was residing in an institution in Indore, has found a loving embrace in the arms of her American couple that has adopted her,” he said adding that the couple, living in the United States, had applied for adoption under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 and its 2021 amendment act.

“The Sanjeevani Seva Sangam institution in Indore facilitated the inter-country adoption of the girl, who is completely blind,” he said, adding that the girl has been handed over to the couple in accordance with the adoption order issued by the Indore Collector on February 1, 2024. Following the order, the institution assisted in obtaining the girl's birth certificate from the Municipal Corporation to apply for her passport.

“After receiving the passport, the parents arrived at the institution on March 13, 2024, to take the girl with them to the US,” he said, adding that he along with Asha Singh, the director of Sanjeevani Seva Sangam were present to witness the emotional reunion between the happy family and 2.5-years-old girl, who was found abandoned in other district before she was provided shelter and complete care in the Indore-based hostel. The couple expressed immense joy, and the girl seemed happy to be with them, the senior WCD official said, adding that the couple had applied through Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), where details including physical and mental health of all the legal-free children, who can be adopted, are available.

“The US couple, who already have three children, are assured of providing best care to the girl while we also have a mechanism for regular monitoring of the children, who are adopted through CARA,” he said. TNN

Laura Williams of the Garden Court Family Law Team represented the local authority.

This is the first reported decision where the court dispensed with parental consent in an adoption case with a surrogacy background.

The child, ‘N’, was born as a result of a surrogacy arrangement in 2005. The child’s biological father (but not legal father) and his wife wanted to adopt N, as it was not possible to obtain a parental order with no consent forthcoming for this.

N, now 18 years old, had been brought up by the applicants since he was 18 months old. N considered the applicants to be his parents in all senses of the word, although in law they had no status as his parents. N supported the application. The respondent parents; the surrogate mother and her husband, opposed the application for adoption.

The local authority, who provided an adoption report into the suitability of the applicants to adopt, also supported the application. The court dispensed with the respondent parents’ consent on welfare grounds. This meant that the court decided N's welfare needs require an adoption order to be made, even if his legal parents did not agree.

Balmaceda, head of the investigation into irregular adoptions. In charge of this file for 5 years, the judge has 1,100 international adoption files to process, covering the period 1970 – 1999. To date, 650 files have been analyzed. The judge declared: “during the five years of investigation, I have not succeeded in establishing the commission of a crime”. 

This partial assessment may seem surprising if we consider the circumstances in which international adoption of Chilean children developed. The dictatorship of General Pinochet (1973 -1990) is known for having resorted to forced disappearances of political opponents and discrimination against indigenous minorities. The government, aware of its “image deficit” internationally, and considering the number of “orphan” children, opened the country to international adoption, thus hoping to give the world a more human face of the regime. Several  thousand children  have been adopted in Western countries, for example in  Sweden , France, the United States and Switzerland. The context was therefore conducive to abuse, and today, many Chilean families are demanding accountability (see also my publication of 01/13/2023).

To explain this lack of convictions, it must be emphasized that Judge Balmaceda does... the work of a judge: he analyzes the facts and decides whether they constitute a crime within the meaning of the law. The judge notes that although it sometimes came close, it was not possible to construct a legal argument that could lead to a conviction: “All the people who seem concerned and who are alive have been heard, but the existence of a punishable act could not be established, nor the presumptions allowing the qualification of participation in the facts as author, accomplice or receiver. The people who seemed most involved in the facts and who could possibly have established some responsibility, are now deceased.” Asked how to qualify the facts reported by the victim families, the judge replied: “It is difficult to judge the events of the time with today's mentality. Most of the 1,100 cases occurred before 1989, when the legislation was changed and was vastly different from what it is today. It included far fewer guarantees and made it possible to place children with people for adoption.” The judge also details the processes which made it possible to achieve a national or international adoption, and notes how difficult it is to question practices which, at the time, were, at least formally, in conformity with the law in force. And the judge concluded: “an act may be morally reprehensible, but I am the criminal judge, and I must punish behavior that constitutes a crime.”

This testimony is important in light of current debates surrounding responsibilities linked to irregular adoptions of the past. It sheds very specific light on the way in which these acts can be qualified from a purely criminal point of view. If the observation of the impossibility of a criminal conviction can be difficult for the victims to accept (the organization “Hijos y Madres del Silencio” has also requested the resignation of the judge following this article), “the exercise Chilean” has the merit of demonstrating that the legal route is not always the preferred route. Of course, this does not mean that nothing wrong was done and that we should move on; In this sense, historical studies and restorative measures remain absolutely necessary.

But this new piece of the puzzle questions more broadly initiatives aimed at “criminalizing” practices linked to irregular adoptions, in particular those which seek to qualify them as crimes against humanity. Having already expressed myself several times on the subject, I am not going to reopen the debate here, but Judge Balmaceda's findings raise questions: if ordinary criminal law does not allow conviction, is it a question of persisting in this direction and to try to construct other legal reasoning to achieve a conviction “at all costs”? Or is it rather a matter of taking note of the fact that the law's response is precisely to say that it is not possible to convict? Naturally, the diversity of contexts, eras and actors could allow other conclusions to be reached. The fact remains that the law is also subject to general principles of human rights (no punishment without law for example) which must also be respected.

Abstract

Drawing on an empirical narrative research study, this article illuminates the lived experiences of Indian adoptees of closed adoptions, that is, those who had no contact with their birth parents in the run-up to or following adoption. The findings of five in-depth accounts comprising young adult and adult adoptees present a deep and nuanced understanding of what remains a relatively unexplored area of adoptive family lives in contemporary India practised in an environment where the intricacies of culture and notions of biological ties are privileged over social ties. This article illustrates how the way adoption stories are lived, experienced and shaped contributes to adoptees’ understandings of how to navigate the challenges to confirm their membership in their adoptive families in a situation where these relationships fall under constant suspicion, denial and disapproval. While it is accepted that this non-representative sample cannot reflect wider perspectives of adoptive lives, it nevertheless highlights the inherent complexities and provides a useful springboard for further research.

Keywords: adoptive family; family practices; closed adoption; adoptees’ voice; India

Introduction

Adoption is an established family practice in India but a little-studied topic. Sociologists have widely written about changing family structure and dynamics in India over the years, yet adoption is arguably the most neglected family relationship in the sociology of family (Fisher, 2003; Ruggiero, 2021). Contemporary sociological debates and concepts improving understandings of the diversity of family lives have moved us away from the terminology of ‘the family’ as some static normative ideal, to focus on what families do rather than notions of what the family ought to look like. Morgan’s (1996; 2011) concept of family practices has been useful in exploring the complex realities of family lives rather than assessing whether they live up to a policy-driven normative standard of ‘the family’. He conceptualises family practices as a series of practical and emotional activities that family members and others play in relation to each other. While carrying out the practices, they affirm, reproduce and sometimes define the relationship (Morgan, 2011; 2020). While these practices are important to define the relationships, at the same time, they need to be conveyed to and understood by relevant others to make the actions effective. Finch’s (2007) concept of ‘family display’ contributes to our understanding of how meanings of ‘family’ are conveyed, recognised and understood as ‘family-like’ relationships. Finch argues that the need for display might be greater for families furthest away from ideas of what a ‘proper’ family looks like. For example, she suggests it may be more useful to think about degrees of intensity in the need for display: ‘… the need for it becomes more or less intense at different points in time, as circumstances change and relationships continue to be renegotiated’ (2007: 72).

In 1979, China introduced a law that stated that families could only have one child. The policy was introduced in a draconian attempt to fight poverty and control the population. Unfortunately, this meant many children were abandoned. When Kati Pohler's parents became pregnant with a second child, they knew that they could not keep her. They left her on a bridge with a note saying that in 10 or 20 years' time, for her to come to find them. This is how it all unfolded. 

Meet Me On The Bridge

Originally from China, Kati Pohler grew up in Michigan under the loving care of her adoptive family. Her biological parents Qian Fenxiang and Xu Lida, however, still live in China with Kati's biological older sister. At the time when Kati was born, China still had its now abolished one-child policy. A couple who got pregnant a second time would either face forced abortion or heavy financial penalties if caught otherwise. (1)

Her parents kept the pregnancy a secret because they did not want to abort the child. Still, they knew that they could not keep her. Kati's biological mom gave birth to her on a houseboat, hidden away from the eyes of any doctors or authorities who would have to report them. Next, Qian and Xu took Kati to a covered vegetable market and left her there with a hand-written note.

"Our daughter, Jingzhi, was born at 10am on the 24th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, 1995. We have been forced by poverty and affairs of the world to abandon her. Oh, pity the hearts of fathers and mothers far and near!