Participants of the second international conference on Children and Residential Care 15 May 2003

This document represents the agreements made at the Second International Conference on Children and Residential Care in Stockholm, Sweden, held from 12 to 15 May, 2003. The conference was sponsored by the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the Swedish International Development and Co-operation Agency (Sida). The document includes the principles and actions, regarding children and residential care, that were agreed upon by the participants at the conference.

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In February 2018, we held a getaway for adult adoptees, over two nights at Barrenjoey Hideaway in the Adelaide Hills. The aim of this getaway was to connect adopted adults in a relaxed setting, for them to share their experiences of what life has been like as an adopted person. Coinciding with this, we filmed interviews and created a documentary by which we hope to raise awareness of the complexities and issues surrounding adoption.

Five adoptees reveal their most personal experiences of adoption and how it has affected their lives.

See how their seemingly unrelated life experiences resonate with others who’ve faced such extreme trauma so early in their lives but are somehow expected to be grateful. The common traits among adoptees, despite their seemingly different circumstances and the unspoken issues which sometimes surface decades later.

This new emotion-charged documentary dispels many myths which have kept adoptees silent for decades and helps unite them as a community working for better lives.

A not-to-be-missed documentary for anyone touched by adoption.

“In Haiti, Mica didn't have a mirror, so it hangs above her play corner. It is special for her to see herself,” says Miranda Tollenaar (49). She recently started living with her adopted daughter in a 'no longer so humble home' in Arnhem.

“I used to live in a small house. Too small for Mica and me together. My dream was to find a house for the two of us, within walking distance of Mica's school. But I never thought it would work.” The Arnhemmer searched for a long time for a suitable, larger home and out of desperation she even enlisted the help of a TV program . Miranda eventually found her place in the Spijkerkwartier.

A place of your own

"This house brought us peace after the adoption period." It lasted eleven years and gained momentum when Miranda was allowed to pick up Mica after all these years. “It gives us a fulfilled feeling that we have everything we want here. A delight!” De Arnhemmer refers to, among other things, the amount of space (76 square meters), two separate bedrooms and a garden. "I always thought that combination was not feasible, but now we both have our own place."

'Really our moment'

Khan and Sayeed found a childless couple in Hyderabad who were willing to adopt a child... once the newborn's condition improved, the child was handed over to them, said an officer

Four persons, including a mother of a six-month-old, were arrested after the newborn was illegally handed over to a childless couple in Hyderabad, police said.

Cops are investigating if the child’s mother – identified as Shamima Shah – and her accomplices got any financial benefits.

Shah, who is already a mother to five other children, however, told police her husband had married another woman. He was not supporting them financially due to which she decided to give away her sixth child.

“We are checking if the four got any monetary benefits. But it appears Shah was not in a position to take care of a child and a childless couple wanted a baby. So, the newborn was handed over to them without following due legal procedure,” said an officer.

Have you ever tried to go back (in your thoughts) and listen to yourself, to what you really felt growing up as an adoptee?

When I try to go back in time like that, I realise I have so many feelings and thoughts I never dared to express. I still carry those feelings inside of me.

As a transracial, intercountry adoptee growing up in Sweden during 1970-1980, I feel that I was part of an experiment. Children from countries all over the world were placed in Swedish families and we were supposed to be like a “clean slate”, as if our life stories started at the airport in Sweden.

My background was never a secret and I was allowed to read my documents from Chile. But I never felt that I could talk about my feelings and thoughts about my first mom. I held so much inside and was never asked to express anything regarding my feelings or thoughts. I couldn’t understand why I was in Sweden, why I wasn’t with my mom and my people in Chile. I felt so unwanted and not loved.

I wrote a letter to my mom as if I was 7 years old. I don’t know why I did it, but I wrote the letter in Spanish.

There’s a resounding silence around the world from the majority of adoptive parents when adult intercountry adoptees start to talk about whether our adoptions are illegal or illicit. Why is that? Let’s begin the conversation and unpack it a little.

As an intercountry adoptee, I was purchased through illicit and illegal means and it has taken me years to come to terms with what this means and how I view my adoption. I’m not alone in this journey and because of what I hear and see amongst my community of adoptees, I believe it’s really important for adoptive parents to grapple with what they’ve participated in. This system of child trafficking in intercountry adoption is widespread! It’s not just a Guatemalan, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan or Russian issue – it impacts every country we are adopted to and from, beginning back in the 1950s enmasse, through to current day adoptions. The 1993 Hague Convention came about because of the vast number of illegal and illicit adoptions. The Hague could possibly blind adoptive parents into believing their adoptions cannot be illegal or illicit because they went through the “approved” process and authority. But while a Hague adoption is less likely than a pre-Hague private or expatriate adoption to have illegal and illicit practices within, it is no guarantee because the Hague lacks mechanisms to enforce and safeguard against child trafficking.

To date, most adoptive countries have also not curbed or stopped private and expatriate adoptions that bypass the Hague processes. This means illegal and illicit adoptions are very much still possible and facilitated through a country’s immigration pathways and usually the only role an adoptive country will play in these adoptions, is to assess visa eligibility. This remains a huge failing of adoptive countries who assume a birth country has all the checks and balances in place to prevent illegal and illicit practices within private and expatriate adoptions.

If you aren’t grappling with what you’ve participated in as an adoptive parent, you can be sure your adoptees are, at some point in their lives. More so these days, as the world around us changes and country after country (Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, France) eventually investigates and recognises the wrongs done historically in intercountry adoption. Germany, Denmark and Australia are countries where adoptees are currently pushing for their governments to investigate. Support comes from the UN who last year, issued their joint statement on illegal intercountry adoptions.

It’s important we have these discussions and be truthful with adoptees about illegal and illicit practices that are our adoptions. In ICAV, we grapple with the reality, especially when it comes to searching for our origins and finding out the truth. Here’s a webinar I co-facilitated two years ago on this topic. As you’ll see from the webinar, we are all impacted by these practices – adoptees, adoptive parents, and our original families.

The civil court had in its order said since Ms Ansari was a working woman and a divorcee, she would not be able to give personal attention to the child and that the child ought to be with her biological parents.

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has said refusing a divorced woman to adopt a child on the ground that she is working and hence would not be able to give personal attention to the child reflects a "mindset of medieval conservative concepts".

The court in its order on Tuesday allowed a 47-year-old woman to adopt her four-year-old niece.

A single bench of Justice Gauri Godse in the order said a single parent is bound to be a working person.

A single parent cannot be held ineligible to be an adoptive parent on the ground that he or she is a working person, it said.

In the pantheon of stories of disappearances, the story of Izabel Lopez Raymundo is that of a collateral victim.

It was June 13, 1982, when the military regime of Efrain Rios Mont surrounded the village of Nebaj, where she lived in Guatemala. The military enforced a scorched earth policy and destroyed everything they saw. They set houses on fire, shot a man who was protesting the fires in front of his house; the son stood in front of his family to protect them and was also shot. The mother was taken to the back of the house with a baby on her back and was shot at close range. The bullet killed the mother, but lodged in the baby's body. A soldier took the baby, under the guise of saving him, and placed him in an orphanage. The baby was then adopted and transferred to Belgium, where he grew up.

The baby, now an adult, is called Lopez. She has a scar on her chest where the bullet entered, "as if to say never forget", Ms Lopez said. It was this scar that allowed his family who stayed behind to identify him.

Ms. Lopez told her story during the recent session of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED). The Committee regularly hears or reads testimonies from families and other survivors of enforced disappearances.

“I testify today in tribute to my family, who were massacred in cold blood, and also in tribute to the victims of war who were made to disappear,” said Ms. Lopez. “These families who have to rebuild themselves and live with the physical and psychological pain caused by the massacres but also the disappearance of their loved ones. I testify in the hope that things will change and that this will not happen again. »

"During the week I spent with him, he was unmanageable," said Thursday at the helm of this forties.

A Frenchwoman was given a 10-month suspended prison sentence for neglecting a minor, we learned on Saturday from the Draguignan prosecutor's office (Var), for having abandoned the child she had come to adopt in Congo .

The criminal court also pronounced against this forties, social worker in an educational action service in an open environment, a ban on exercising a professional activity in contact with minors, thus depriving her of her job.

In 2018, after having followed all the steps allowing the adoption of an orphan, now eight years old, who was welcomed in an orphanage in Brazzaville, this woman from Fréjus (south-eastern France) finally had decided, during his first visit to the child, not to adopt him. "During the week that I spent with him, he was unmanageable," said Thursday at the bar this forties, according to comments reported by the regional daily Var-Matin and confirmed to AFP by one of the parties' lawyers. civil.

Child safety guaranteed

Despite the Zambia affair, according to 24sata, one child from DR Congo was adopted and brought to Croatia after the eight were arrested at the beginning of December last year in Zambia.

After eight Croatian citizens ended up in a Zambian prison on suspicion of child trafficking from DR Congo, a woman from central Croatia managed to adopt a child from that country, from the same orphanage, and bring him to Croatia, 24 Hour has learned .

"The woman adopted a child from the same orphanage as the arrested Croats, and the adoption process was identical. The girl she adopted received all Croatian documents," people familiar with the case told 24sata, Telegram reports .

They said that when she saw what happened to the Croats in Zambia, she decided to go directly to DR Congo to get the child. According to the interlocutors involved in the case, the woman gave an African woman a power of attorney to bring her a child from an orphanage. "She went to DR Congo alone to meet her and the child. The African woman in question, who has a company in Croatia, and who had a power of attorney, came to pick her up at the airport in DR Congo," they say.

Then the two of them brought the girl to Croatia. 24sata states that seven more children with Croatian documents are waiting to go to Croatia in the same orphanage.