John Erik Aarsheim is contacted by many who doubt his adoption history. The organization Adopted demands a full investigation of adoptions carried out in the 80s from Colombia.

- I have received around 20 inquiries from people who feel that they are in the same situation, says John Erik Aarsheim.

Before Christmas, Aarsheim discovered that he was kidnapped in the 80s before he was adopted in Norway. This month he got to meet the biological family after 32 years.

- But with the knowledge I gained after being in Colombia now, I am not surprised by the number of inquiries. This is a huge problem there, and it should just be missing that there are no more cases like mine in Norway, says Aarsheim.

In 2019, Dagsavisen wrote about another boy who was kidnapped and adopted to Norway in the 80s.

YEREVAN/TBILISI, Jan 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A probe into the suspected sale of dozens of Armenian babies to foreign families has left hundreds of women wondering what became of their own lost children in the biggest illegal adoption scandal to hit the former Soviet republic.

Police say a criminal ring tricked mothers out of their newborns in what is the latest smear on a lucrative international adoption market, with growing calls for a total shutdown to end similar abuses.

While the scale of the problem is hard to estimate, child protection experts say high adoption fees of up to $100,000 fan a black market that affects children from India to Uganda.

Anti-slavery groups consider illegal adoptions, when a child is brought to another country in breach of regulations or as a result of wrongdoing, a form of child trafficking.

The scandal in the Caucasus surfaced in November, when authorities revealed that more than 30 children had been sent to Italy for adoption between 2016 and 2018 after their mothers were pressured into giving them up.

MT — . One of the accusations levelled at gender-critical feminists, even those with decades-long track records of leftwing activism and gay rights campaigning, is that we are somehow in league with the Religious Right.

Trans-rights activists like to portray themselves as the vanguard of liberal progress, and use this to justify their

rejection of any public debate or scrutiny of their insistence that the legal and everyday definition of ‘woman’ is

changed, which feminists argue makes it harder for women to protect their boundaries and rights.

What the trans-rights activists are less willing to do is cast a critical eye over their own bedfellows, be they Big Pharma,

GOOD MORNING. Now, walking out in style is an art in itself. Before we get to other news, we’ll take a look at a very different type of exit due February 1. Whether one of the EU’s top HR people publicly accusing her new bosses of being cold, distant and — more generally speaking — mean, sets a good example is questionable. But if you’re on your way out anyway, why not make a statement you’ll be remembered for.

Just one piece of advice, kids: Don’t try this at home. (If you do, get your Umlaute right.)

BOMBSHELL EMAIL: Irène Souka, who will retire at the end of the month as the Commission’s director general for human resources, left a stinky parting gift in the inbox of Björn Seibert, the president’s chief of Cabinet, in the form of an email with thousands of people in copy, seen by Playbook. The subject line: “It’s all about respect.”

Spreading the word: On Tuesday afternoon, Souka sent a farewell note to her department (and her high-level network, which includes other DGs) announcing her departure after what she described as a “protracted period of uncertainty” since the new Commission took office. In the email, Souka shared a note she said she had sent to Seibert the night before and “forwarded to the Commissioner” Johannes Hahn.

Left in the dark: In the email to “dear Bjoern,” Souka said she had offered to stay longer to “help the new Commission during the first year of its mandate,” but did not get the response she had hoped for and was left in the dark about how long she was needed, or wanted. “Today, just 4 days from my retirement date, I am still no closer … to knowing the final position of the political authorities in order to provide the staff of DG HR with some clarity about my situation,” she wrote.

Rennes: the battle of a Breton family to obtain French nationality for their adopted daughter

More than two years after her first application for French nationality, little Lola, is still not officially French. Adopted in 2013 by Laurence and Bertrand Thébault, residents of Laillé in Ille-et-Vilaine, the young Haitian woman no longer has a passport.

At the Lola center, surrounded by her brother Rémy and her parents Bertrand and Laurence Thébault. © Radio France - Valentin Belleville

 Rennes, France

It's a never-ending fight. Adopted in 2013 by Laurence and Bertrand Thébault, a family residing in Laillé in the south of Ille-et-Vilaine, Lola, a young Haitian woman struggles to gain French nationality.

Mismatch of expectations leads to traumatic parting with parents; Centre launches remedial plan.

Nine-year old Arun (name changed) was returned by three families between 2015 and 2019 after he spent varying periods — four months to nearly two years — with them as either their adopted son or soon-to-be adopted son. Now, the government’s apex adoption body has stopped any further attempts at placing him with a family so he can be counselled and healed of the trauma caused by multiple rejections.

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has recorded 246 instances of disruption over a period of five years between 2014-15 and 2018-19, which translates into six in 400 children being returned at an advanced stage of adoption. On an average there are 4,000 legal adoptions annually within and from India, as per official data. With the number of such cases showing a recent increase, CARA has begun a nationwide capacity building programme for social workers who help assess the suitability of the adoptive family and prepare a child for a new home.

CARA’s CEO, Lt. Col. Deepak Kumar, says, “This is not a happy situation. Children returning to the institution after being placed with a family face rejection and are scarred for a long time. In order to check this trend we formed a sub-committee of experts last year who travelled to different States to help us build capacity among social workers. A media report cited that there were 1,100 disruptions over the last five years, which is incorrect, as the correct figure is 246. We need to understand the difference between parents withdrawing from the adoption process for various reasons after accepting the profile of a child, and those who return the child after taking them in pre-adoption foster care, which is called disruption. While the former is about helping parents take an informed decision on adoption, the latter is completely detrimental to the best interests of the child.”

He adds that there have also been 10 dissolutions since 2015 when CARA underwent a massive reform. In such cases, parents return the child after they have received the adoption order from a court, which can take a year, if not more.

President of the Adoption Authority: We will resume the steps for international adoptions because it gives children with disabilities or other ethnicities a chance. Families in Romania resort to adoption only if they cannot have biological children

ARTICLES • JANUARY 22, 2020 • EDITORIAL OFFICE • 1,664 VIEWS • 12 COMMENTS

We will resume the steps for international adoptions, because they offer a chance to a family of children with disabilities or other ethnicities in the protection system, in the context in which the Romanian families do not adopt such children, said the president of the National Authority for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Children and Adoptions (ANDPDCA), M?d?lina Turza, in an interview with Agerpres.

Turza said she is considering more measures regarding adoptions: simplifying the procedure for internal adoptions, evaluating case managers, because it is a problem with opening adoption files, and will launch an adoption promotion campaign.

"The families of Romanians who adopt children are those who cannot have children naturally, mostly. I think this story of adoption must be popularized among people. I do not think Romanians necessarily refuse to adopt, I believe that there is simply not a very strong awareness of this option and I think that a campaign in this sense is very useful ”, said M?d?lina Turza.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Federal appellate judges closely questioned attorneys for the government and Native American tribes Wednesday over whether a law meant to preserve Native American families and culture unconstitutionally intrudes into state adoption issues.

It was the second time in a year that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was considering the future of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act. A three-judge panel of the appellate court upheld the act in August in a 2-1 ruling.

Opponents of the law — including non-native families who have tried to adopt American Indian children — sought and got a full court re-hearing. Sixteen judges heard the latest arguments.

Aside from strictly legal issues, the case sparks strong emotions. Matthew McGill, representing families challenging the law, told the court that one set of would-be adoptive parents had a child “pried out of their arms because she was not an Indian.”

Outside the courthouse, Rosa Soto Alvarez, of Tuscon, Arizona, held onto the flag of the Pascua Yaqui tribe. She said the ICWA helped her and her three siblings get adopted by a Native American family after her mother’s suicide when she was 11.

The changing landscape of international adoption: Where we’ve been and where we’re going

Bethany spearheads efforts to change the emphasis from bringing children to the U.S. to instead finding adoptive homes for children in their home countries.

Kristi Gleason, Vice President of Global Programs

January 21, 2020

In 1982, Bethany Christian Services assumed responsibility for the international adoption program that had been run by the State of Michigan, seeking American families for orphaned or abandoned children from South Korea. Throughout our nearly 40-year history with international adoption, nearly 15,000 children have found a home with safe and loving families.

A group of donor-conceived and surrogate-born people have spoken out at the UN in a renewed push to improve the rights of access to biological information.

Giselle Newton, a PhD research student at UNSW, is one of 16 donor-conceived and surrogate-born people from around the world who are leading a renewed push to change laws which govern their access to information about their genetic heritage.

For the first time, the group told their own stories at a historic visit to the United Nations to mark the 30-year anniversary of the Convention for the Rights of the Child in Geneva on November 19.

They presented their five recommendations* to the Human Rights High Commissioner Michele Bachelet, and received a standing ovation from the audience.

“We highlighted the consequences of ignoring the voices of those most affected by these practices,” Ms Newton says. “Donor-conceived people are experts on this issue and our voices need to be listened to and acted upon.”