Two prospective adoptive mothers are waiting day-by-day to be enabled to travel to India to bring back their children, a process that stopped abruptly with the onset of the pandemic. To Television Malta the two mothers stated that for months they have suffered a Calvary because of fears the children may have become ill … or may perhaps perish … because of the virus surge that has brought India down on its knees.

Anamika Farrugia is five-year-old. She was adopted from India three years ago by a Gozitan couple. She is desperately waiting for her adoptive sister to be brought from India as well.

Her mother said that this morning Anamika told her she is going to buy her a present but will not give it to her until her sister Sathvika arrives and then they will give her the present together.

In her innocence Anamika thinks her sister wants to remain In India and does not want to come to Malta.

Her adoptive mother says that Anamika asks her whether Sathvika has changed her mind and does not want to join them. Adoptive mother Angie Farrugia says such a question gives her great consternation.

In the 1950s, the world famous American-born entertainer Josephine Baker, who lived in France, toured the US. She was refused in 36 hotels in New York because she was black.

Back in France, Baker adopted twelve children from 10 different countries in order to prove to the world that people of all ‘races’ and religions could live together. She organised tours through the castle where she lived with her ‘rainbow tribe’ and made the children sing and dance. In the 1920s and 1930s the popular novelist Pearl S. Buck adopted seven children, four of whom were labelled ‘mixed-race’. By doing so she flaunted American restrictions on mixed-race adoptions. In the 1950s, Buck said she did so because she wanted to show that families formed by love – devoid of prejudices based on race, religion, nation, and blood – were expressions of democracy that could counteract communist charges that America’s global defence of freedom was deeply hypocritical.

The adoptions by Baker and Buck were political statements that illustrate that intercountry adoptions were frequently about much more than saving a child, as many people who defended adoptions claim. My Identities article, ‘Parenting, citizenship and belonging in Dutch adoption debates 1900-1995’, explains why debates on this issue continued, without ever reaching a conclusion. Celebrities (including Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt) followed in the footsteps of Baker and Buck. Non-celebrities copied behaviour and arguments. Adopters tried to show that children and adults not connected by blood ties could form a family, and that single parent adoptions or adoption by same sex couples could work. Critics pointed to child kidnappings, trafficking, ‘baby farms’ and a profit-driven industry based on global inequality. Adoption was not a solution to poverty, nor in the best interest of the child, in their view.

Adoption was and is a popular subject in women’s magazines and (children’s) literature, starting with the biblical story of Moses in his basket. It features in large number of TV sitcoms (e.g. Modern Family, Sex and the City), movies and books (Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Superman). Ancestry.com offers DNA tests to find ‘your liberator granddad’, there are numerous TV shows about searching birth parents, and heritage tours to birth countries are popular.

Overall, the public and media are fascinated by adoption stories, while the issue torments authorities. This has been the case for over a century. My Identities article tackles this question of continuity by placing intercountry adoption within the context of migration, to which it legally and administratively belongs. This is an uncommon approach. By placing it in the migration context, and addressing it from a historical and comparative perspective, the interaction between discourses, policies and practices are analysed, and the continuity explained.

History

FFIA's start in Bombay 1980

The business started when a Mr. E. Raman Rao made contact in 1979. It was with the then KFA, the Association of Adoptive Children with children adopted from Thailand, where Britt-Marie Nygren (formerly Hembert) was a member. Britt-Marie was tasked with investigating whether it was a serious contact and, if so, how it would be organised.

One man who helped Rao make contact and who then became involved in the FFIA was Christer Fält. He was then the contact person for many years and supported the prospective adoptive parents. Rao was in Sweden selling Bibles on behalf of the Adventist movement to which he belonged. He received inquiries from Swedes about adoption and decided to help them. He contacted the Juvenile Court and established good relations with them. With that, they began the procedure of placing children for adoption after the "on remand" investigation instead of sentencing the child "court committed" to an orphanage as before. The problem with such a judgment was that in order for such a child to be placed for adoption, the judgment had to be set aside with a "release order". This was a matter that included the Ministry of Social Affairs and could take a very long time,.

Eventually a procedure was established in Bombay which followed our procedure.

US authorities have dismantled a vast network between Uganda and the United States, specializing in the adoption of fake Ugandan orphans.

“Young children were taken from their Ugandan families against the promise of special education programs and studies in the United States, before being offered for adoption to American families”. In a statement released Monday, August 17, the US Treasury said US authorities had uncovered a "corrupt" network offering fake Ugandan orphans for adoption by US parents.

Some children were removed from "vulnerable families in remote Ugandan villages" by intermediaries ensuring that they would be entrusted to missionaries in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, during their schooling. American families awaiting adoption, unaware of these methods, then had to bring the children back to their country.

The Treasury , responsible for promoting economic prosperity and ensuring the financial security of the United States, announced financial sanctions against two Ugandan judges as well as a Ugandan lawyer and her husband, at the head of the network. They are henceforth undesirable on American territory, their possible economic resources in the United States will be blocked and access to the American financial system will be denied to them.

For its part, the American justice announced the indictment of the Ugandan lawyer but also of an American resident in the State of Texas, both presented as the brains of the network, whose members have pocketed more than 900,000 dollars, according to investigators.

Madras High Court: P.T. Asha, J., addressed a matter in relation to adoption and modification in the birth certificate of a minor in terms of change in the name of the biological father of the child.

Legal status of a biological daughter

Petitioners are the adopted father and biological/natural mother of minor seeking direction from the Court that petitioner 1 be appointed as a father of the minor female child and consequently, the minor child be entitled to the legal status of a biological daughter with all the rights of succession and inheritance in respect of the adopted father and a modified birth certificate of the minor be issued.

Adoption Regulations and the JJ Act

Petitioners have contended that the conditions prescribed under Adoption Regulations and the Juvenile Justice Act have fully been complied with while filing the present petition.

HYDERABAD: The alleged rape of a minor girl at a city orphanage

recently, has brought to light the illegal mushrooming of child care

institutes (CCIs) across Telangana. According to officials of the women and

child welfare department (WCWD), there are over 200 such shelters up

and running in the state — most of them in Rangareddy and Medchal

Owner of Strongsville agency, employees charged with conspiracy in foreign adoption cases

Updated 8:58 PM; Today 6:48 PM

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When most of us think about international adoption, we take a process with lifetime and generational implications and narrow it down to one brief moment in time — the moment an adoptive parent meets their child for the first time. We watch videos of an adoptive parent’s first embrace of their new child; see the child cry and pull away or perhaps fiercely hug the adoptive parent back, and we are overcome by this moment.

Few other moments in life are as transformational or poignant as when complete strangers come together as a family for the first time.

But those impacted by adoption know it cannot be distilled down to a single point in time. Adoption begins with a woman learning she is pregnant and feeling completely overwhelmed with how she will care for and raise a child. It begins with a family experiencing a series of setbacks that leads them to consider the unimaginable — is there someone else, anyone else, who can care for my children if I reach the breaking point?

Flash forward in time to an adoptee graduating college, getting married, having a baby. The adoptee wonders if his birth parents had the opportunity to graduate from high school or college as he himself walks across the stage to accept his diploma. An adoptee stands before the alter and wonders how her wedding might be different if her birth father and birth mother were sitting in the front row next to her adoptive parents, witnessing her exchange wedding vows. When an adoptee gives birth to her first child, she looks into the eyes of her newborn and sees her birth family’s genetic legacy looking back at her.

The reality of adoption is that the impact begins well before a child is placed for adoption and extends far beyond the moment of placement, into eternity.

The state government is launching a foster care scheme under which citizens can parent children from state-run child care institutions for a limited period of one to three years. The scheme is being implemented as a pilot project in five districts including Mumbai suburban. The government has invited applications from interested parents.

Maharashtra has about 450 government-run institutes that house thousands of children who are either orphaned or whose parents are unable to raise them. Children living in these child-care institutions and between the ages of 7 to 18 may be placed with families under the foster care scheme.

“The basic principle of the Juvenile Justice Act is non-institutional parenting of children. Besides the adoption scheme, this is an opportunity for the children to live with the unrelated families albeit for a limited period. Their stay in the families will help them their qualitative growth,” said Manisha Birasis, program manager of the integrated child protection scheme and assistant commissioner, department of women and child development.

Birasis said district-level committees comprising district women and child welfare officers, child protection officers, members of the child welfare committee and protection officers of non-institutional care will look into the background of the family who apply to foster children. “There will be strict monitoring every 15-30 days by us with the help of interaction with the principals of the schools, neighbours of the family and with the child itself. Children in conflict with the law, those living in observation homes and those in the age group of zero to six years are excluded from the scheme. The first category is excluded for security reasons, while children younger than six years have prospects of permanent adoption, which is our top priority. Children from child care institutes and in the age group of six-18 years are being placed in this scheme, among which our first preference will be the children between six-10 years,” she said.

Explaining the difference between adoption and foster care, Birasis said adoption gives parents the rights of biological parents while foster care is temporary and the parents have no legal rights over the child.

Chandigarh police collected the DNA samples of two rescued babies and their actual parents to establish their relationship. The samples were collected at GMSH-16 and then sent for DNA profiling to CFSL in Sector 36. Two policemen had procured the child from an alleged child trafficking gang after paying money.

Five members of the gang, including three women and two men, are in police custody. While the parents of the rescued children have recorded their statements before a local court. Sources said, the parents have claimed that the gang members, including two ASHA workers, had misguided them about their children immediately after the birth. One of the parents, sources said, claimed in her statement that ASHA worker, Sarabjeet Kaur, misguided them that she gave the birth to twins and one of them was born dead. The statement further recorded that Sarabjeet Kaur had taken away the other child claiming that the condition of the child was not good and she would take the child for further medical checkup.

The five members of the gang in police custody include two ASHA workers, one Sector 45-based woman, Bhawna, and two men including a Punjab police constable. They were arrested with a kidnapped child near Airport light point on August 3. They came to Chandigarh to sell the male child for Rs four lakh. Police had negotiated a deal with the gang through a decoy customer.

A police officer said, “We traced the parents of the male child at Malerkotla in Sangrur. Later, a girl was also rescued, following the disclosure of the gang members. The girl had been sold to a couple for Rs one lakh. We also traced the parents of the girl child. Parents of both the children recorded their statements before the magistrate. The DNA samples of the children and parents were collected. Indeed, poverty is also one of the reasons behind this racket. Police department is considering legal action against the couple who had paid money to the accused for procuring the girl child, a fortnight back. The result of the DNA samples will come after at least one month. The accused searched for childless couples, approached them, negotiated and sold the children.”

The two ASHA workers have been identified as Sarabjeet Kaur of Sangrur and Kuldeep Kaur of Patiala district. The other accused Bhawna is from Punjab and lives at a rented accommodation in Sector 45, Chandigarh. Police said the Punjab police constable held in the case, Amarjeet Singh, is a resident of Kharar in Mohali. Another accused, Mandeep Singh of Ludhiana, is the brother of accused Sarabjeet Kaur.